


the thing about Joe is...

by mitzvahmelting



Series: hoe kelly [3]
Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: 2018 Off-Season, Boston Red Sox, Established Relationship, M/M, Marathon Sex, Safe Sane and Consensual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-15
Updated: 2018-11-15
Packaged: 2019-08-24 05:43:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16634042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mitzvahmelting/pseuds/mitzvahmelting
Summary: It's Nate's birthday party, and Joe is insatiable. He said so himself.the red sox ensemble gangbang and team-as-family fic





	the thing about Joe is...

**Author's Note:**

> blame the mlbnet discord for making me care about joe kelly. as for nate eovaldi - ehhh i would have cared about him on my own eventually, sweet baby
> 
> disclaimer - well, if you got this far, i figure you know what you're here for and i ain't gonna stop you. but for what it's worth, uh, this is fiction.

The thing about Joe is, if he wants something, he’s gonna tell you. All the way from the airport to the front door, he’s gonna be telling you.

“That’s not _fair,_ ” Joe whines as he shuts the passenger door, “You said we were gonna do this, Nate, and if this is the last time we’re all gonna be together—”

Nate scoffs, and presses the lock button on the fob as they head up the driveway to his house. “When did I – Joe, you know for a _fact_ I never said we would do that. I’ve always been against it.”

“But it’s the offseason!”

“I don’t care _what_ season it is; you’re a goddamn pitcher and the only time you’re allowed to push your body that hard is if you’re doing that thing you get paid millions of dollars to do. End of story.”

Then Nate opens the door and the guys inside give a warm “Hey!” Not everyone could make it down to Texas for Nate’s birthday, but with spring training looming and many of them being shipped off to different teams, most of the guys managed to get here for one last hurrah. They’ve been hanging out for awhile – Joe’s was the last flight in. Everyone else started in on the chili and the beer and -

“Are you guys on the PS4?” Nate hangs his keys on the hook by the door before peeking further into the living room. Joe toes off his shoes and follows, dropping his carry-on in the foyer with the others. Mookie, Brock, and Xander are sitting on the floor in front of the tv, Xander with the controller and the other two nursing their beers. On the screen they’re flipping through _MLB The Show 18_ player profiles. They’ve got little videogame Nathan Eovaldi in his Rays jersey, and they’re snickering about it.

Brock says, “At least your character actually looks like you!”

Xander elbows him, “Yours looks exactly like you.”

“You both look like Ken dolls,” offers Mookie, and then, “Oh, hey Joe!”

The rest of their teammates also turn to greet Joe – they’ve caught Sale with a whole forkful of chili spaghetti in his mouth but he gives a little wave from the kitchen where he’s standing with Christian, Mitch, and Blake. Price comes through the foyer from behind them – he must have been in the dining room or something, and he claps Joe and Nate on the shoulders as he passes them to throw himself backwards onto the couch, meanwhile Jackie and Benny are getting up from the couch.

“Hey man,” says Jackie, and he tugs Joe into a tight hug. “Nice to see you.” And maybe Nate forgot what it’s like to watch Joe smile like this – sure, he smiled in the airport and he joked around on the way home, but it’s different to see him light up like this, the way he seems to change when he’s in the warm embrace of his teammates. When Jackie pulls back, Benny goes in for the next hug, and Joe buries his face in Benny’s shoulder a bit. “Missed you,” says Benny.

“So there’s a pot of chili in the kitchen,” Nate says to Joe when the hug breaks and everyone’s caught smiling softly at each other. “Price made cornbread. And there’s beer if you want, but I hear that Blake’s making cocktails later, so maybe save your liver for that.”

Joe laughs, calls out to Blake in the kitchen, “Did they card you, Swi?” and receives a pointed middle finger in response.

It really does feel like a breath of fresh air to have everyone here after three months apart. Even if next season sends some of them their separate ways… Nate can stave off that sense of mourning for one more weekend. For one more weekend they’re just the World Series champs, they don’t have to go back into the world and prove themselves again.

And they’re a family. For one more weekend they’re a family.

“Is this everyone?” asks Joe, and Nate turns to study him. Seems like Joe’s being very careful not to look disappointed.

“Well…” says Nate. “Rafi and Nunie are in D.R., a bunch of the other guys had conflicts…”

That’s when Sandy says “Not everyone!” before coming in from behind to bear hug Joe, who shouts his name and spins in his arms to hug him back, tightly.

Nate smiles wider. Sandy and Joe were something special – not just because Sandy was good at managing Joe’s notoriously wild focus during the game, but specifically because of how things went down a year ago. The way Sandy became the impromptu architect of… everything that happened.

Sandy bridged the gap between desire and the execution of those desires.

It was really a fluke that Sandy was the one to do it. But maybe it’s just that he had certain experiences, in the minors or in the winter league, maybe Sandy was just the only one among them with the balls to _say_ that… that it’s not something shameful, to want to fuck in the back of the locker room, or in shared hotel rooms, or on planes between cities.

The gay thing – it always _happened,_ it was one of those things that just naturally _happened_ in baseball, but you didn’t talk about it. Sandy talked about it.

And here they were, all these months later, and Sandy… he must be the most special person in Joe’s life, because Sandy opened that door for Joe.

Anyway.

“I-I thought you were in Venezuela,” says Joe, a tinge of a sniffle at the end of it, like he’s keeping himself together but just barely, so relieved to have Sandy again.

“I show up for my boys,” Sandy tells him, then pulls back to ruffle Joe’s hair a bit. “How are you doing, in the offseason? Too… ah… thirsty?”

Joe flushes. “I’m, I’m fine. At least…” he leans forward to press a kiss to Sandy’s cheek, “now that you’re here. Oh, and Nate says we can do the thing tonight.”

Sandy’s eyes widen, darting back and forth between Joe and Nate. “He said – you mean, _your_ thing, Joe? That’s the thing he said we can do?”

“No I didn’t!” Nate protests, “I specifically said we _can’t.”_

“Ehh, let him do it.” Price settles himself back on the couch, sipping from the beer that used to be Benny’s. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

“He could get hurt,” Nate supplies automatically.

Price rolls his eyes. “Nate, come on. Offseason’s the one time a year that we don’t need to be treated gently, give him a break. Besides, if it’s the only thing that can satisfy him…”

Joe nods meaningfully at Nate. “I’m insatiable,” he says, with a straight face.

Nate crosses his arms, leaving Joe’s orbit so he can sit on the couch by Price. “It’s not the _only_ thing that can satisfy him. Joe, you’d be just as satisfied blowing us, wouldn’t you?”

Joe makes a _tsk_ noise, wrapping his arms around Sandy and pressing his chin possessively against the catcher’s shoulder. “I didn’t fly in from California for a blowjob, Nate.”

“I thought you flew in from California because you wanted to celebrate my birthday,” Nate counters, playfully pouting.

Joe rolls his eyes, trying to stifle a laugh. There’s a warm chuckle from behind Nate’s shoulder, and he feels Jackie’s fingers start petting his hair. Price points out, “If we’re ever going to do it, now’s the time. We’re all together, with a month or so before spring… if we don’t, then we’re always going to be left wishing we did. You don’t want to do that to _poor Joey_ , do you, Evo? Shatter all his hopes and dreams?”

“Oh, _hello,_ ” Xander says suddenly from near the TV. “Is this what I think it is?” 

Mookie whistles. Everyone turns their attention to the PS4 – even the guys from the kitchen trickle in.  On the screen is a team roster… for the fantasy draft of the Texas Rangers.

 _Nate’s_ fantasy draft.

“Hey,” Nate cuts in, scrambling off the couch and towards Xander and the controller, “don’t look at that.” He tries to wrestle the controller away, but Mookie snatches it from Xander, then passes it off to Sale, who came in from the kitchen and is standing just out of Nate’s reach.

“Matt Kemp? A.J. Ellis?” Sale reads off the screen. “Pablo Sandoval? _Nolan Ryan?_ What is this, Nate, you cheating on us?”

When Nate gets close enough to reach out to grab the controller from Sale, Sale passes it to Blake at the last second, and then it goes to Mitch who carries it around to the other side of the room. Nate groans. “It’s just a fantasy draft; it’s part of the game.”

“Funny,” remarks Brock, “usually a fantasy draft is supposed to be a _good_ team.”

“Where am I?” Sandy asks, mock-offended and pushing playfully at Nate’s shoulder. “Am I not good enough catcher for your team? I don’t make the cut?”

“Where are any of us?” asks Mitch. “And why is everyone on this team over 30?”

Nate sighs. If he explains himself, maybe they’ll understand. “I just…” he says. “Don’t you ever wonder what it would be like, if you could play with all those people you miss from your old teams? Everyone you ever wanted to play with? It was just… that, just a silly fantasy. I didn’t need to put any of you guys on there because I _already_ get to play with you.”

“Well, who made the cut into Evo’s fantasy bullpen, then?” asks Sale, nodding to Mitch with the controller. “That is, besides _Nolan Ryan.”_

Everyone snickers at Nate’s classic Hall of Famer crush. Then Mitch tabs over to look at just the pitchers, and the room goes silent.

“I don’t know,” Nate admits in a helpless tone. “At some point I just couldn’t imagine _not_ having Joe.”

And there he is, up on the screen. The only current teammate Nate snuck into his fantasy draft: Joe Kelly.

“Oh,” says Joe from somewhere behind Nate, in a tone thick with half-teasing emotion, _“Sweetheart…”_

“Shut up,” Nate grumbles. The rest of the guys start a chorus of cooing noises, and a moment later Joe’s arms wrap around Nate from behind.

“He loves me, he really loves me!” croons Joe, before giving Nate a sloppy kiss on the cheek which, despite the teasing intent, still makes Nate shiver a bit because, _oof_ , it’s been months and he missed this.

Nate tells him, “Don’t be a dick,” but Joe’s far past listening to him.

“Well, birthday boy,” Joe pleads right into Nate’s ear, all hot breath and noise, “if you love me so much, will you let us do the thing? _Pretty please?”_

On the opposite side of Nate, Sandy crouches down with his palms pressed together in a pleading gesture, complete with a puppy dog pout on his face. Joe makes a waving gesture with his hand behind Nate’s head, and then _everyone_ joins in on the pleading, except for Mitch who, under the chorus of _pleeease_ , can be heard asking “What are we asking for again?” to which Christian responds “Orgy,” with a shrug.

Nate lets out a longsuffering sigh. “Fine,” he concedes. “With a few ground rules—” but Joe’s stopped listening, because he’s already cheering for his victory.

“Wait,” Blake interjects after a moment. “We’re not doing this, like _right_ now, are we? Because there’s still so much food and I… I really wanted to show you my take on the clubhouse drinks. I added cinnamon to the Green Monster…”

“That sounds disgusting,” says Mookie.

“Gimme one,” says Brock.

Nate stands up. He’s unsurprised when Joe doggedly holds on around his neck – Nate just grabs Joe’s legs and lets him hang like a koala. “We’ll do it later. Everyone stay sober enough to do your times tables, okay? And uh…” he turns his head towards Joe on his shoulder, “Joey, if we’re doing this… you might want to stay away from the chili.”

“Yes, sir,” replies Joe, and he gives an enthusiastic salute.

…

It started before Nate got traded to the Red Sox – he’s not sure exactly when it started, but he knows that the pace and scope of it really picked up after that Sox-Yankees game where Joe got into a nasty fight with Tyler Austin, got ejected and suspended.

It was weeks after he met Joe that Nate finally saw footage of the incident. The way Joe just _threw_ himself into the fight, dodged Austin’s approach and tackled Austin to the ground, aiming punches at his head… it was _Judge_ that eventually pulled them apart. The 6’7, 280lb _Aaron Judge_ had to wrestle scrappy little 170lb Joe Kelly away from the fight. And Joe was still _aggro_ about it, wild in the eyes, throwing his fists…

When everything broke up, Joe’s shirt was ripped open to the navel, his whole chest exposed, heaving from exertion, and there was blood trickling down the side of his neck.

Looking back at that footage, Nate isn’t exactly _surprised_ that it triggered something of a sexual revolution among the team.

At that point, Joe had already messed around with Sandy and Benny before, and when Joe got ejected in the top of the seventh, the two of them _happened_ to be on the benches, available to drag him into the locker room and get all the aggression out of his body with a quick and dirty handjob.

As for the rest of the team, that started sometime after Joe refused to apologize. The strategic thing to do, you know, would be to apologize to Austin, or apologize for inciting him to violence (the footage clearly shows Joe egging him on, waving him closer and everything.) If Joe apologized for it, maybe the League would have reduced his suspension.

But Joe refused, because when he gets pissy he gets really stubborn about staying pissy. And that’s when Sandy said, you know, “That’s not fair to the rest of the bullpen, that they have to clean up your mess, pitch all these games for you while you are suspended.”

And further, Sandy said, “Maybe you should make it up to them.”

Because, after all, that’s exactly the sort of thing that gets Joe hot, and Sandy knew that.

So Sandy’s kinda the one who made that happen. Joe blows the rest of the bullpen one by one, begging for their forgiveness in that sexy little tone of voice he uses when you _know_ he’s just putting on a show of it. And Sandy’s the one who made sure beforehand that the guys in the bullpen… that each one of them would be cool with it, that it wouldn’t make them uncomfortable. That they’d be gentle. That they’d allow Sandy to supervise to make sure things didn’t get out of hand.

And then it sort of went to the rest of the team, too, because Joe is (in his own words) insatiable, and with Sandy as the intermediary… it made everything _okay._ Sandy made everything okay.

The thing is, Nate knows that a lot of guys fuck around in MLB. There are a few guys in particular who have a reputation for it – he won’t name names. And there are so many ways for it to turn ugly – not just from soap opera drama and hurt feelings, but _abuse._ Like if a vet takes advantage of a rookie, or if a team gets rough with a slutty teammate because they think sexual promiscuity makes a person less of a person.

But that didn’t happen with Joe. Part of that is because Joe has enough self-esteem, and he’s not ashamed about what he likes in bed, and he’s willing (as the fight with Austin demonstrates) to _throw down_ with anyone who disrespects him.

And the other part of it was Sandy. Building bridges for Joe, chaperoning his exploits, making sure everyone was courteous to each other. And beyond Sandy, it’s the way that everyone really _took_ to Joe, everyone on the team really recognized the vulnerable place Joe was putting himself by admitting and acting on these desires, and they’ve _protected him_.

They were so cautious about bringing Nate into this.

But Nate, once he got it… he really _got_ it. Maybe moreso than anyone else.

When Joe needs things rough, he goes to Nate. Seems like no one else is really willing to take things that far with Joe, or if they are willing, they get _too_ rough and they have to be all apologetic afterwards, because they thought Joe wanted it but it was more than he could handle. But Nate… it really feels intuitive to him. He’s got a little experience with this kind of roleplay thing, and he gets what it is that Joe wants out of it.

They mesh together well. Nate can fuck Joe like he hates him, and then they’ll separate for an hour, decompress with trusted friends, and come back together for cuddles and hot cocoa like equals.

Nate thinks it’s something about the adrenaline rush: Joe likes having something to fight back against. That’s why he got so aggressive in the fight with Austin – Joe likes to be _angry,_ to get _physical._ Joe wants to be _used_ , rode hard and put away wet. Joe wants to fight back at first but then be physically overwhelmed by his partner. Joe wants to be shamed and made fun of and fucked hard, and then, at the end of it, he wants everyone to still respect him, both as a friend and as one of the best damn pitchers in baseball.

And then there’s this thing.

Because, for ages, Joe’s been wanting to do a scene where everyone just fucks him till he passes out. That’s this huge fantasy for him; that’s how far he wants them to push him. Even if it takes hours. He wants to pass out.

And Nate said no (you know, like a sane person would). Nate thinks, first of all, that pushing Joe to that level of exhaustion is a huge risk. They might wind up injuring him, or making him ill, or hurting his mind… it’s unpredictable and reckless and stupid. And then, how do they tell when he passes out? How do they tell whether he’s going to be alright with some rest, or if he needs medical attention? None of them are doctors.

What if he pulls a muscle and it never sits right again, what if he stretches his arm weird and his career skids to a halt?

Well, some of these outcomes are more likely than others.

And… Price had a good point, about never having another chance like this. About this being the perfect time – the only time they could do this for Joe.

It’s Nate’s birthday and what he really wants most of all is… to do something really special for Joe.

It’s Valentine’s tomorrow. Maybe he’s being sappy.

…

At some point, Joe decided to go through Nate’s fridge for ingredients, and then he made himself a four-egg omelette with tomato, spinach, onion, and feta cheese. When Nate levels him with a look, Joe just shrugs, swallows, and says, “It’s my pregame routine.”

“Speaking of pregaming,” Nate settles in at the kitchen table next to Joe. It’s a small round table with four seats, the rest of the guys are still spread out in the living room, shooting the shit over the PS4. “I wanted to talk through my ground rules for tonight.”

“Whatever.”

“Joe, I’m serious.”

“I _know_ you’re serious.” Joe wiggles in his seat, focusing his attention down on his food, the way the cheese stretches between the fork and the plate. “It’s – fine, it’s whatever. Go ahead. Hit me.”

“I don’t want you to _actually_ pass out.”

Joe drops the fork, and it makes a tinny sound. _“Nathan,”_ he moans, disappointedly. “Fuck, I knew you’d back out.”

“I’m not backing out—”

Joe won’t hear it. “Yeah, you _are_ , because passing out is the whole _point_ , and you said we could do it for real this time but you always pussy out of it at the last second, or you make all these rules that ruin it, and… come on, man.”

Nate leans back in the chair. He crosses his arms and looks at Joe pointedly.

“Sorry,” Joe caves, frowning. “I just don’t want to get my hopes up if you’re not gonna follow through.”

“Why don’t you let me finish what I was saying before you decide that I’m not following through?”

Joe nods, picks up his fork again. “Alright.”

The fact is, Nate knows Joe wants to be torn apart. You could leave him black and blue all over, and he’d say thank you. Times like this, he really needs Nate to rein him in, and Nate’s patient enough to not rise to the bait of Joe being temperamental about it.

“Instead of making you pass out,” Nate says to him, carefully, “I want us to make you _tap_ out.”

Joe perks up. “Like in wrestling?” Nate nods. Joe smirks, puts his chin in one hand. “I’m listening.”

“I don’t want you to physically pass out, so instead we’re just gonna… go at it until you can’t take it anymore. We won’t stop until you tap out.”

“What if I never tap out?”

“Then we’ll just fuck you harder until you give up,” Nate responds smoothly. He’s thought through it all in his head – actually, he thought through it on the ride to pick up Joe from the airport. He’d had a feeling they might end up doing this, against his better judgement. “Obviously we’ll be keeping an eye on you and making sure you’re conscious, hydrated, coherent, having a good time… but beyond that, it’s all on you.”

From the way Joe’s eyes are hooded, the way the blush creeps up his cheeks and his voice sounds a little hoarse, Nate infers that, uh, Joe’s into the idea. “This could take… hours…” Joe points out, dreamily.

“That’s why we’ve got a whole baseball team to do it. Do you think all of our stamina combined could match yours?”

Joe stabs into a piece of fluffy omelette, and says “maybe,” before popping it into his mouth.

A couple minutes later, they pull Sandy into the kitchen to lay out the plan for him. The way Sandy smiles about it – with this saccharine fondness for Joe – makes Nate smile too. Sandy’s the one who suggests they gather their resources early, so Nate points him to the garage to fetch the case of Gatorade while Nate goes upstairs to root around for the box of condoms and lube. Joe watches them scuttle around the house, from his perch at the kitchen table, like a queen bee observing the efforts of her drones.

Nate takes the condoms and lube, and a few towels for good measure, and he dumps them on the bed in the guest bedroom because he sure as hell isn’t having marathon sex on his own bed after having just changed the sheets, like, yesterday.

When he comes back, Benny’s sitting with Joe, leaning on his elbow on the table and watching Joe fondly.

Benny’s the other piece of this puzzle. Sandy’s role, when all this sex started, was to facilitate Joe’s sexual habits in a safe environment. If Benny wasn’t filling that role, then his place in the story becomes a little more nebulous. Maybe he was just Joe’s favorite at first, maybe they just messed around a lot… but the lingering connection between Benny and Joe seems like more than that.

Nate doesn’t know the whole story, but his hunch says that it has something to do with Benny being _kind._ That’s what the kid’s known for – he’s a little shy, he’s a little quiet, but he’s _kind_ , and even when he really opened up around the team, that kindness never disappeared into the ether of unnecessary politeness.

If, in those early days, Joe offered to blow Benny… well, if it’d been any other teammate, there would have been a risk that they’d just take what pleasure Joe offered them and then turn away from him, having gotten what they wanted out of the transaction. But Benny is another breed of person. There’s so much love in the way he looks at Joe, not just because Joe offered him pleasure, but because Joe _opened up_ to him, was vulnerable around him, and Benny really… must have been really moved by that, especially when he was just establishing his place in the majors.

“So you really want to do this,” says Benny, and it’s not really a question. Nate leans against the wall; they know he’s there, but he’s not interrupting.

Joe hums, sipping from his glass of orange juice. (When did he get that? He really did just make himself at home in Nate’s kitchen, didn’t he?) “Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I don’t appreciate what we usually do. It’s just that I’m left coherent at the end of it.”

Benny makes a skeptical face. “For most people, that’d be a good thing.”

“Not really,” Joe counters. “People want mind-blowing sex, right? If they’re coherent at the end of it, hard to say that their mind was blown.”

“So, what we usually do is fine, it’s just not mind-blowing?”

“Mmhmm.”

Benny chuckles, and shakes his head in something like disbelief. “I don’t get it. I think usually I can kind of wrap my mind around where you’re coming from, liking anal, liking blowjobs, liking roleplay… but this is beyond me.”

Nate jumps in, “It’s not so different from what we usually do. This isn’t so different from that whole gangbang thing after the ALDS.”

But Benny bites his lower lip, furrows his eyebrows. “I think it is? Different, I mean. But maybe I’m just imagining the outcome wrong. What is… Joe, what are you going to look like when we’re done with you tonight?”

Oh – that’s a good question, one that Nate had meant to ask earlier before he got distracted by Joe’s attitude. And now that Benny’s voiced it, Nate realizes just how important this question is, because it has Joe frowning, and averting his gaze from the table.

“I don’t know,” says Joe, evasively. “It’ll be fine.”

Nate pulls a seat out from the table, and he settles in with them. “This is pretty important, Joe. Whatever the answer is, I promise I won’t change our plans, but I think Benny’s right, that we really need to know what to expect from you if we push you that hard.”

Benny nods. “I’m kinda worried he’ll punch me out,” he admits to Nate, half-joking.

Joe snickers, “No, I’m pretty sure I’ll be too tired for that, buddy.” But then his smile fades, and he stares at the table, scratching the wood laminate with a fingernail. “I don’t actually know. I’ve never done this before. I mean – as you know, I’ve got a pretty high tolerance for, uh, this kind of stuff.”

“Do you think you’ll cry?” Nate asks. Joe’s gaze jumps up to Nate, a little bit surprised that Nate would even say that. Nate points out, “Sometimes you cry at the end of our scenes.”

Joe scrunches his nose up, glaring balefully in the general direction of the coffeemaker. “That’s different,” he says, “that’s – I mean. Those scenes are emotional, it’s different from this, and _anyway,_ of course I’m not gonna cry, because if I do, Evo’s gonna pull the plug on the whole fucking thing.”

“I won’t,” Nate says. Benny gives a little nod of approval, and Joe just looks stunned. “Look, Joey, if this is what you’re aiming for, and we know ahead of time to expect it and to keep going – I won’t stop it.”

“But you said I had to be ‘having a good time,’” Joe argues, “You said I had to be ‘coherent.’”

“I mean, _yes_ , for a given value of the word. I need to know you understand what’s going on, and you understand how to tap out, but if we _know_ you want to be crying by the end of it—”

“I don’t—” Something defensive passes over Joe’s face, and he glances sidelong at Benny, “I’m not a— It’s not like I _want_ to cry, it just happens.”

Benny’s expression doesn’t change. “Okay,” he says, neutrally.

Joe’s shoulders drop. “Okay,” he says in agreement. Then Benny leans over to press a kiss against his cheek, and Joe lets out a long exhale at the contact.

“I should let the guys know what to expect,” Nate says. Joe shrugs ambiguously, but he doesn’t stop Nate from standing up. “Maybe this goes without saying,” he adds, “but no matter what, Sandy or I will be in the room with you.”

Joe nods, because this is standard operating procedure. Not that he doesn’t trust everyone on the team, because he does, but he trusts Sandy and Nate (and Benny for that matter) with his _life._

“Okay,” Nate says. “You go on and finish your eggs. When you decide you’re ready, you and Sandy can go up and get prepped. I’ll talk through the rules with the guys. And… Joe?” He catches Joe’s gaze and holds it. “I don’t want you being afraid to say something just because you think I might call the night early. If something needs said, you better say it. I’ll be as flexible as you need. We’ll take breaks, we’ll make adjustments. Anything.”

Joe nods, wordlessly. Nate knows Joe doesn’t like all the procedure, all the careful tip-toeing around Joe’s consent, but these things have to be restated sometimes, and Joe gets that – he just doesn’t say anything about it, like he wants Nate to be done talking as soon as possible.

“Okay,” Nate says, satisfied. He nods at Benny, and then he heads into the living room.

…

“Quit looking at me like that,” Mookie snaps as Nate comes into the room. He’s got the PS4 controller this time, and Jackie and Price are sitting up close next to him on the floor.

“Like what?” asks Jackie, innocently.

“Like I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“You don’t,” Price points out.

Mookie makes a noise of playful outrage, “I sure _do,_ I’m on a major fuckin’ league baseball team, I think I know how to do the fantasy draft.”

“Alright, folks,” says Jackie, leaning back against the base of the ottoman and stretching his arms behind his head. “Mookie’s gonna show us how it’s done.”

Sale and Brock and Mitch are settled in on the couch by the TV, Xander and Christian are swapping pictures or something on their phones but they perk up at the announcement.  Nate sits on the other side of the couch next to Blake and Sandy.

“So, uh,” Mookie’s smiling the way he does when he can’t keep a straight face, smiling so hard his face will start hurting. “’Start Draft’, I just click that, and—”

On the screen, the computer starts filling in all the first-round picks until it gets to Mookie’s team. “Who’s he playing?” asks Xander.

“The Yankees,” replies Price. Everyone in the room makes a face like they tasted something sour, and Price laughs. “Just fucking with you. Who do you _think_ he’s playing?”

“Hey, how come they got – I wanted Babe Ruth!” Mookie cries.

“Nah,” Nate points out, “he almost always goes first, when you have the dynasty players in the draft. You’ve gotta trade for him later in the season.”

“Hey, Evo,” Blake chimes in. “How much time have you spent playing videogame baseball?”

Nate gives him an exaggerated wince. “An embarrassing amount.”

“Best guess?” asks Sale.

“Uhh…” says Nate. “The first _MLB The Show_ came out in… ’06.”

They break into peals of laughter, and Nate just grins, sheepishly. “Oh, lay off,” he tells them, “I was a sophomore in high school, okay, it wasn’t weird then.”

“Sometimes I forget you’re all still babies,” Price teases.

“As of an hour ago, I’m 30, so suck it,” Nate shoots back. Then everyone erupts in cheers, patting him on the back and reminding him ‘Happy Birthday’ again.

Mookie’s still struggling with the PS4. Now Brock comes up behind him, to point at which button Mookie can press to check the stats of the players. He accidentally opens up the main menu twice before hitting what he meant to, but eventually they secure their first-round pick.

Then Benny and Joe step into the entryway. “Hey, Sandy,” Joe calls, “You’re up.”

“Oh shit, are we starting that?” says Blake, “I gotta brush my teeth, or I’ll taste like cinnamon Green Monster.”

“Gross, man,” Christian tells him.

“You’ve got time,” Sandy says as he stands up. “Joe and me will go upstairs. Nate?”

“Got it,” Nate says.

“Good man.” Sandy pats his shoulder as he passes by.

When everyone’s sitting around him like this, all focused on him, Nate always feels like he’s a cub scout leader or something. It’d make more sense if his brain offered up the analogy of “feeling like a coach” or “feeling like a team captain,” but for some reason, he always comes back to feeling like a scout leader. He was never actually in the scouts. But these guys are looking up to him with almost unflinching obedience and it feels… weird as hell.

“So, overview,” he says when Sandy and Joe disappear up the stairs. “Uhh, same rules as usual. You can back out whenever, no one’s obligated to participate. You listen to what he says, you listen to what Sandy and I say, and nobody gets hurt. You use condoms, you use lube, you ask questions when you don’t know what you’re doing. Any questions about this bit?”

No questions, but some of the guys are holding back giggles – they’re nervous and excited about the sex, which, fair. Plus, on more than one occasion Brock’s pointed out how _funny_ he thinks it is, to hear Nate use the word ‘lube.’

“Basically the reasoning behind all this is that Joe thinks he’s insatiable, thinks he can take anything we throw at him and then some, so we’re gonna call his bluff and fuck him till he taps out. Tapping out means an open palm hitting the bed or your body, at least twice. If you see something that you _think_ looks like tapping out, you stop and you check in before you keep going. No matter what, Sandy or I will be in the room to make sure things don’t get out of hand.”

Price raises his hand, and Nate quirks his mouth before pointing out that this isn’t grade school. So Price just grins and asks, “So that’s how we win, my question is: how does Joe win?”

Nate tips his head back. “Fuck, isn’t the fact that we’re doing this at all a win for Joe?” he asks, which gets a few giggles. “Look, I guess there’s an off chance that Joe outlasts all of us and keeps asking for more. If that happens, I vote we get his head checked because that’s _insane._ You all oughtta be able to outlast him. This is - this is an endurance test, it’s a relay race. I think you’ll be able to handle it.”

At the end of Nate’s speech, Brock and Mookie start cheering, like that was a pep talk before a game and they’re getting hyped to take the field. Jackie doesn’t miss a beat – he asks, “So, what’s the starting lineup, Coach?”

“Um,” says Nate, “that’s a good question.”

…

Here’s what he figures.

There are certain guys that Joe gets snippy with, like he has to prove himself around them. Nate wants to bench those guys at the start, because if the overall goal is to get Joe to a headspace where he taps out, he’s gotta be in a more submissive mindset before he gets to that part of the lineup.

So they’ll start with the guys Joe is naturally softer around: Sandy, Benny, Jackie, maybe Xander or Christian.

When they get Joe all relaxed and pliable, that’s when they bring in some of the middle of the roster: Brock, Mitch, Sale, Blake, and Price. This way, when Joe sees them, he’s just going to lean _into_ submitting to them, rather than put up walls of vestigial, prideful resistance.

And then, the closers. First, Mookie, who happens to boast the nastiest hip-snap Nate has ever seen, and then Nate himself.

If it comes to that, Nate’s confident he can make Joe cry uncle.

He goes over the plan with the rest of the team and they seem to agree with his assessment. The guys he designated for the middle and end of the lineup don’t seem too put-out about it; there’s a lot of pressure, being the first one to take your clothes off, and they’re happy to leave that honor to someone else.

He tells Benny and Jackie that they should come upstairs when they’re ready. Jackie nods, and holds up his cocktail glass to say that he’ll come up when he’s finished with it. Benny steps near Nate, then gestures for Nate to lead the way.

It’s not a very big house. It’s much bigger than Nate needs, considering he’s living all alone, but he wanted to get something big enough to host his extended family when they visit, so… Besides, the housing market out here isn’t too steep. On the upper floor he’s got the master bedroom and the en suite, an office space, a half bath in the hallway, and finally the guest bedroom opposite the master, with its own en suite. Nate doesn’t bother hitting the lights as he goes up the stairs because the shadows make this feel more private, but Benny hits the light switch as he comes up behind him, and it’d be weird to turn around and ask him to turn it back off.

He knocks on the guest bedroom door, softly. “It’s Nate and Benny,” he says.

From inside, Sandy says “Come in.”

The bed is a queen size mattress, outfitted with an old ugly duvet that used to belong to Nate’s parents – despite how ugly the thing was, Sandy had the courtesy to remove it before laying the bath towels down atop the sheets. In the middle of the bed, laid back on the pillows, is Joe. He’s naked from the waist down, left in only his socks and a t-shirt from spring training ’15. His cock lays soft between his thighs.

Joe giggles a bit, at being caught literally with his pants down. “Y’all come here often?” he drawls in welcome.

Sandy’s washing his hands in the bathroom sink, but he joins them after a moment. “So,” he says, “we are doing this?”

“Fuck yeah we are,” says Joe, “no take-backs.” But then he glances around the three of them. “Where’s everyone else?”

Nate smirks. “Joe, if we’re in this for the long haul, I figured we’ll start slow and work our way up. No point in everyone standing around watching you get fucked; you can only handle so many dicks at once.”

“Come on,” Joe counters, jokingly, “I’ve got two hands and two feet, don’t I? Bring it.” He wiggles his toes in his socks.

But Sandy crawls onto the bed, and knee-walks closer until he straddles Joe’s legs. Hovering over him with one hand braced on the mattress, Sandy purrs, “It has been too many months since I was last able to say this to you, _cariño:_ shut the fuck up.”

Then they kiss. Joe leans up into it, his head hovering like three inches off the pillow just to be closer to Sandy, arms wrapping around Sandy’s back insistently, pulling him closer. Nate gets a hand on Benny’s shoulder and leads him over to the daybed so they can sit, rather than stand around awkwardly and watch Sandy and Joe make out – they’ll still watch, but it’s less strange if they’re seated.

Sandy doesn’t usually fuck Joe. They may have done it once or twice, but on the whole it seems like Sandy gets more satisfaction managing Joe’s sex life than participating in it – Nate figures it’s a Catcher thing, so he wouldn’t understand. Instead, Sandy likes to kiss Joe and prep him, make Joe cum on his fingers.

Nate likes watching them – he appreciates seeing the emotion from Sandy, whispered endearments when their mouths break apart. Honestly, it’s the sort of thing Joe probably needs more of in his life. Makes Nate’s chest feel warm to listen to it.

Then Joe starts humming into the kiss. Oh, fuck him. Benny lets out an undignified snort of laughter, and Nate puts his head in his hands. Fuck this. A few months ago, Joe started getting real loud in bed, but not the usual, human type of noises. He was just _humming,_ like a bumble bee, and it made shivers run up and down Nate’s spine - not the good kind of shivers, but the nails-on-a-chalkboard kind. It’s his fucking pet peeve, and Joe knows this, and that’s why he keeps doing it as loud as possible whenever Nate’s in the room.

Nate groans, “Really? Can you not?” 

Benny knows about it too, which is why he’s cracking up. “Joe,” he jumps in, “you’re killing him, lay off.”

Joe gives an exaggerated moan into the kiss, and it turns into even louder humming.

That’s exactly the problem that Nate’s trying to manage with this lineup – Joe is so _contrarian_ , can’t just lay back and enjoy it when someone like Nate is in the room. Any other day, Nate would leave the room entirely so that Joe could relax, except he doesn’t want to leave. It’s been almost four months and… well, now that he’s got Joe back, he doesn’t want to miss a second of it.

Luckily Sandy’s here, and he takes mercy on Nate’s ears. Sandy claws his hand around Joe’s balls and squeezes tight.

The humming cuts off with a squeak. Joe’s heel skids across the sheets.

“Enough,” says Sandy, and Joe whimpers, nodding fiercely.  God, it’s satisfying. Both because Joe totally deserved that, and because watching Joe squirm is a fucking marvel.

The room goes quiet, then, except for the rustle of sheets, the sounds of kissing, the little sharp breaths from Joe as Sandy loosens his grip but doesn’t let go, starts kneading his balls.

Next to Nate, Benny shifts, unbuttoning the fly of his jeans to relieve some of the pressure. It’s an unconscious movement, and Nate’s a little bit proud that Benny’s so comfortable around him that he can adjust himself without feeling embarrassed about it. Maybe at the beginning of this year, Benny would have been the type to get very excited and nervous about sex, like anyone his age. The look in Benny’s eyes now is calm familiarity, like being in the bedroom with his teammates has become something like home to him. It feels natural.

“Hey, Evo?” Benny murmurs softly. It’s probably loud enough for Joe and Sandy to hear in the silence of the room, but not intentionally.

“Yeah?”

Benny scratches at the scruff on his chin, absentmindedly, continuing to watch Joe and Sandy kiss and touch. “Can I kiss you?”

Nate stiffens. Benny’s never – not that it’d be a bad thing, if he did, but... He’s never said anything like that before to Nate. Few of the guys really, uh, really seek out Nate in the same sort of context they would seek out Joe. If that is – if that is what Benny means, when he… “What?” Nate asks.

Benny still stares forward at the men kissing on the bed. “Listening to you talk to Joe earlier… you take all this really seriously. You’re a stand-up guy, Nate. I really…” He rolls his head back, stretching his neck. “I really appreciate you being here. And if it was okay with you, I’d like to… well. Not like _that_ ,” he gestures vaguely to the bed, “but just. Just once, maybe.”

“Sure,” says Nate, because he’s really not sure what else he could possibly say. It’s _Benny,_ after all, and he’s so sweet, and…

There are parts of this developing group sexual dynamic that allow for everyone but Joe to maintain some level of plausible deniability. That is, if Joe is the one pursuing sex among his teammates, and they choose to consent to sex insofar as they perform the “masculine” role, then at the end of the day they can still wrap themselves in the familiarity of heterosexual identity.

For some of the guys, that’s a very important part of all this.

Not really, for Nate.

Benny tastes like vanilla chapstick, and beer, and… sweetness, not the taste but the feeling, the way his fingers touch Nate’s chest almost hesitantly, gently. When he pulls away, he looks up at Nate through his lashes, the same coy softness to his gaze that Joe uses in the afterglow of a nice night.

And then Benny curls up against Nate’s side, tucking himself under Nate’s arm, and it’s… not what Nate expected from Benny, but it’s gratifying and warm, and as he turns his attention back to Joe and Sandy, Nate allows himself to just bask in this, this perfect and fleeting moment.

…

Joe’s voice is ragged, a few minutes later, when he flops down against the bed and says in a rush, “Hey, what if I just cum _right now?_ That seems like a good idea; let’s do that.”

Facetiously, Nate responds, “Well, if you think you can cum so early and still last long enough to take all of us… I don’t see why not.”

Joe shuts his eyes and groans. “But it’s _Sandy,”_ he says, helplessly, “I want to – _God,_ I want to cum for you, all I want to do is cum for you, _baby…”_ and his hips kick up eagerly off the bed. He tries to kiss Sandy some more, insistently, but he only manages to catch the corner of Sandy’s mouth and Sandy’s _laughing,_ and it reaches his eyes, the crinkle of crow’s feet.

“I think,” says Sandy, “he is ready for Benny. Before he gets too excited.” Sandy catches Benny’s gaze, and then, in a rather demonstrative fashion, wraps his fingers tight in a ring around the base of Joe’s cock. Joe whines, covers his face with his hands but doesn’t interrupt. “You hold here,” Sandy instructs Benny. “Keep him from cumming too soon. Down there, he is open for you if you want him. Condoms are there.” He tips his chin towards the pile on the bedside table.

Benny leaves Nate’s embrace, beginning to unbutton his shirt and kick off his slacks. Sandy goes into the bathroom to wash the lube from his hands again, but then he’ll probably come back around the bed to join Nate seated in the window.

Free of Sandy’s grip, Joe uncovers his face, looking blearily up at Benny. Joe’s still just as half-clothed as before, but now his shirt is rucked up to his armpits, and the hem of one sock has slid all the way down to bunch up around his left heel. Joe’s cock is just on the small side of average, not quite standing tall yet, but leaning thick against his thigh.

“So, we want to try to make you tap out,” Benny muses. It’s the tone of voice he uses when he’s roleplaying – a little colder than his usual approach, a little crueler. Benny’s not a very good actor and even now, Nate can see through the veneer of artificial frigidity to the nervous and excited young man underneath, but Benny’s still got Joe squirming with anticipation. “I could just fuck you like usual, but I was thinking that… if I want to contribute to the team effort, I should really give it my best shot, huh? Let’s try to make you tap out.”

Joe grins at him, spreading his knees to make room for Benny, who is now entirely undressed bar his briefs and his silver chain necklace. “Come on,” Joe encourages him, “ravish me.”

Whatever Joe expected Benny to do next, it probably wasn’t this. Benny crouches down and gets one hand braced against the high inside of Joe’s thigh, that hot sensitive place where the skin is soft, right before the divot of his hipbone. And then Benny takes Joe’s cock in his mouth, and Joe practically jackknifes off the bed. If Benny didn’t have the fingers of his other hand tight around the base of Joe’s cock like Sandy had recommended, then Joe probably would have cum right then and there. Instead Joe’s staring up at the ceiling, unseeing, making a ragged noise and fisting his fingers in the pillows above his head.

Nate smiles at Benny appreciatively – this is a creative move. Sandy comes to join him, wiping his hands clean on his jeans. “He is so easy,” Sandy says, “when he has so many months to build up.”

Nate taunts, “Does that feel good, Joey?”

 _“Fuck_ you – ah!” Joe chokes, when Benny sucks hard enough to hollow out his cheeks, _“Stop_ , Benny, you gotta stop doing that—”

“You tap the bed if you really want to stop, _cariño_.”

Joe twists his fingers into Benny’s hair, instead, tugs hard at him the next time he sucks on the head of Joe’s cock, and Nate’s watching Benny’s expression close enough to catch the way he kind of smirks at the tugging, the burn on his scalp.

This goes on for several minutes. Every time Joe makes a sound that veers more on the side of pain than pleasure, Benny pulls off to look up at him, coyly, pressing kisses up his hip and over the smooth planes of his stomach. When Benny sucks on his nipple, the hard grip in Benny’s hair loosens as Joe’s pleasure ramps up into a hazy, needy plateau. His cock is twitching in Benny’s grip, fiercely red at the tip, and dribbling precum every few seconds.

“Please,” Joe begs, “please, please, please, let me cum, Benny, Benny-boy, please… you’re nicer than these fuckers, you’ll be nice to me, won’t you? Won’t you let me – let me – _God,_ Benny—” But Benny just sucks Joe’s cock again, and the words dissolve into a thin whine.

Someone’s knocking at the door. “It’s Jackie.”

“Come in,” says Nate.

Jackie gives a wolf-whistle when he sees what’s happening on the bed, and he shuts the door behind himself.

“There is a distinct possibility,” Nate points out, “that we are observing Joey in his final death throes.”

“Don’t I know it,” Jackie replies. He stands to the side, unbuttoning and removing his jeans to reveal black boxer-briefs, tented very slightly outwards. “Benny can do some nasty things with his mouth.”

“Is that Jackie?” Joe chokes out, peering around Benny’s body. “Jackie! Save me!”

“Yeah, baby? You want me to save you?” Jackie pulls off his shirt. Both Nate and Sandy’s eyes get stuck on Jackie’s body for a moment and Nate has to shake himself to focus again – Jackie, he’s really something else. Sometimes he does things like this without thinking about it, taking off his shirt like he doesn’t realize his body has its own gravitational pull that he’s just unleashing on anyone within eyesight.

Without warning, Benny shoves two fingers inside Joe, and Joe _vibrates_ soundlessly, his head smacking back against the pillow, like he wants _so_ bad to cum, like his body thinks it’s time, but Benny’s viper-grip on him holds him back.

Joe nods eagerly, presumably in response to Jackie’s question. His eyes are screwed shut and his whole body is tensed up, and his cock is starting to look a bit purple.

Benny pulls off. Before he leaves, though, he grabs the side of Joe’s neck and leans in to kiss him hard on the lips, the taste of Joe’s precum passing between them. “I’ll be back for you, later,” Benny promises.

“You’ll kill me,” Joe whispers, and leans up to kiss Benny again.

They pull apart, Joe’s spit shining on Benny’s lips. “Maybe,” Benny says, with a smirk.

He hops off the bed, and rubs himself through his underwear lazily. “You can go back downstairs if you want,” Nate offers, quietly. “I could come down and get you later. Or you could stay, whatever you feel like.”

“Oh, I’ll stay,” Benny says. He comes over to the daybed, gestures for Nate and Sandy to scoot apart so he can plant himself in the middle. This time he leans up against Nate more insistently – any of his hesitance from earlier has disappeared, with the ego boost he got from making Joe beg for it. And Benny’s wearing far less clothing than either Nate or Sandy. He’s so needy and hard in his briefs, it’s gotta be uncomfortable. There’s a wet spot in the cotton. Benny tips his chin at Jackie, “I want to watch the master at work.”

It’s too easy, to wrap an arm behind Benny’s waist, rest a hand on his hip. In a whisper, Nate says, “You want me to touch you, don’t you.”

Benny’s hips shudder forward a bit. He keeps his eyes trained on the bed as he leans closer to Nate, and mutters, “If you wouldn’t _mind,”_ before kissing Nate’s jaw.

So Nate takes a giddy breath, slips his hand down the front of Benny’s briefs, and together they watch Jackie.

Jackie and Joe have a history. They don’t fuck, but Joe’s got something of a love affair going on with Jackie’s dick. It’s not that Jackie is particularly well endowed – he’s thicker than average, sure, but not wildly out of proportion. It’s just something about the experience of sucking Jackie off that drives Joe wild. Maybe it’s the tone of Jackie’s voice, maybe it’s the way he talks Joe through it, teasing him, directing him…

Jackie makes Joe switch places with him. Jackie lies down on his back, settles in against the pillows, spreads his long legs a bit to accommodate Joe. “Come here,” he says, patting his thigh. “You want to suck it, baby?”

Joe nods, wordlessly. In the progression from Sandy to Benny to Jackie, Joe’s eyes have become a touch wilder, his pupils wider, his approach less colored with backtalk and sarcasm. When he reaches down to peel Jackie’s underwear down, Jackie stops him with a _tsk_ sound, and Joe freezes.

“I don’t think you’ve earned that, yet,” Jackie tells him, sweetly. “Why don’t you show me how much you want it?”

Joe breaks into a grin. _“Shit_ , Jackie,” he says, and then he leans down. Puts his hands behind his back. Starts nosing against Jackie’s briefs, kissing the fabric. He shuts his eyes, lets Jackie’s hand in his hair guide him.

Benny makes a low noise against Nate’s shoulder, and Nate rubs the slick precum down the length of Benny’s dick, takes the whole hot weight of it in his hand to stroke it. Benny shivers, whispers, _“Please…_ ”

“You like the way Jackie talks?” Nate asks him.

Both Benny and Joe make a desperate, affirmative sound, even though the question was only directed at Benny.

Jackie catches Nate’s eye, and winks. To Joe, he says, “That’s good, baby, you can have it now.”

Joe sucks cock confidently. Nate figures, well, of course he’s confident about it if he does it so often. Perfecting his craft, or whatever. It’s kind of like watching a porn clip – Joe’s head bobs up and down, strange sounds coming from his throat when he goes deep, and then he pulls back and just licks and mouths and sucks at the tip, toying with the foreskin. He’s enthusiastic, that’s for sure. Joe just likes being _filled_ , one way or another, and the fact that they’ve been holding back the last few rounds, keeping him aroused but not penetrated, probably makes deepthroating Jackie feel like well-earned release.

Benny’s moving his hips in waves against Nate’s hand, mouthing at Nate’s jaw and whispering that he’s close. But he startles when Sandy puts a hand on his thigh – “Benny,” Sandy says, gently, “would you like some attention for your hole, too?”

On the bed, Joe pulls off of Jackie, staring at Sandy and Benny with an unreadable expression on his face. His chin is slick with his own spit.

But Benny just has eyes for Sandy, and he kind of nods, slowly, like he’s in a bit of a haze but he _wants_ this. He turns his body to make himself more accessible for Sandy, and the other man slides the waistband of Benny’s underwear over the curve of his ass.

Joe’s still staring. When the cool of the lubricant first touches Benny’s ass, Nate can feel the shiver run through Benny’s body, can hear Benny’s exhale turn into a hissed _“Yes…”_

“Hey, baby, don’t get distracted, now,” Jackie says, pulling Joe back down onto his cock. “You’ve got work to do, don’t you?”

Joe murmurs an apology with his lips only a breath away from Jackie’s cock, and then gets back to it. Jackie catches Nate’s eye and raises an eyebrow, seeming to ask, _What do you make of that?_

Nate’s pretty sure that Joe’s feeling jealous, thinking _he’s_ the only one who’s allowed to have Nate and Sandy’s attention. In a way, he’s right; they are obligated to keep an eye on Joe, like they promised. But Nate has no problem keeping an eye on Joe and Jackie while he’s tugging on Benny’s cock with one hand. The real problem must be that Joe’s _possessive_ of Nate and Sandy.

Maybe the fact that Nate and Sandy adapted to Benny’s presence so easily makes Joe feel like he’s fungible, like he could be replaced.

A thought like that, even if it’s only a stray thought… well, it does funny things to Joe’s enthusiasm.

He chokes himself on Jackie’s cock. He really… pushes himself down onto him, until Joe’s got his nose buried in the curls of hair at the base of Jackie’s cock, until he’s got tears in the corners of his eyes and he’s making gagging noises, and Jackie’s head tips back in pleasure as he rakes his fingers through Joe’s hair, _“Good_ boy, good – oh, Joe, baby, _yes…”_

Meanwhile Benny’s got… what looks like two of Sandy’s fingers inside of him, he’s leaking precum all over Nate’s hand and whispering fiercely that he’s not going to last… “There you go,” Nate murmurs, “there you go, come on, Benny,” and he strokes him, and Benny shoots into Nate’s fingers, makes a sound like a whimper against Nate’s chest.

Soon after, Jackie gives a brief warning before he cums, too. He’s got his fingers knotted in Joe’s hair, holding him down the way Joe likes… when Jackie’s pleasure finally ebbs, he praises Joe again. “Swallow, baby,” he says, breathlessly, “swallow it, good boy…”

When Joe finally pulls off of Jackie’s cock, his eyes are low. His breaths are coming short, and eventually he just kind of collapses, with his face pillowed against Jackie’s thigh.

“Is he alright?” Nate asks.

Jackie looks down at Joe, brushes his hair out of his face and studies him. Then Jackie looks back up to Nate with a triumphant glint in his eyes. “I think he came.”

Joe makes a little grunting noise, not bothering to pick up his head or form words.

Nate laughs – now that he’s looking for it, he can see the wet spot on the towel where Joe made his mess. “Jesus, Joey. You really like Jackie’s cock, huh?”

“Mmhmm,” Joe hums. He cranes his neck to peck a kiss on the tip of Jackie’s softening cock, and Jackie breaks down into giggles, petting Joe’s hair fondly.

Benny, still in his own afterglow, takes a tissue from Sandy and starts wiping off Nate’s fingers. Then he brings Nate’s hand up and kisses the back of it, like Nate’s a princess or something. The way Benny looks in that moment – all long lashes and flushed skin – Nate’s not too surprised that Joe feels threatened by him. Especially when Benny turns around and does the same to Sandy’s hand, before tackling Sandy with a very naked hug.

“You’re very cute,” Sandy tells Benny with a grin, rubbing his back.

“I’ve never…” says Benny breathlessly against Sandy’s shoulder, “at least, not like that, never like – wow. Wow.”

From between Jackie’s legs, Joe peeks over at this display from Benny, but he doesn’t say anything.

…

Joe rolls onto his back, picks his head up to look at Nate, and says, “Go out there and find someone who will fuck me.”

So, Nate heads back downstairs. Everything’s about the same as he left it earlier. Price and Sale both have PS4 controllers in hand, going 1-v-1 in a virtual baseball game. Sale’s bragging about the score every chance he gets, but Price doesn’t seem too put out by it. Nate figures Sale’s only winning because Price is so relaxed, drinking his cocktail and hardly looking at the screen. Meanwhile, Blake, Mitch, and Mookie are hanging out on the sofa, presumably dishing Sale some good-natured bullying.

“Hey, look who it is!” Blake greets Nate with a grin. “Got an update from the trenches?”

Nate nods. “Everything’s fine up there,” he says, and then he relays the quote from Joe. The bluntness of Joe’s phrasing makes Blake blush, and go quiet.

Christian, Xander, and Brock file in dutifully from the kitchen, beers in hand. “I hear that!” cheers Brock, lifting his bottle to toast absentee Joe. “Well, who do you wanna _put in there_ , Coach?”

“Mmm,” Nate hums, thoughtfully. He gestures to Brock and the guys from the kitchen. “Start with you three,” he says, “if you’re up for it.”

Of those three, Nate pays most attention to the way Christian takes the offer, because he tends to be the most bashful about this sort of thing, and Nate doesn’t want to peer-pressure him into it. Christian doesn’t say anything – he’s the most soft-spoken on the team, when he’s not calling pitches – but he kind of scratches the back of his head and smiles, and it’s not the reluctant half-smile that Nate was looking out for.

“It’s totally optional,” Nate says again, as they’re following him up the stairs, “and it’s nothing super special this time, just a regular fuck. No ropes or anything – I know that wasn’t your thing, Vaz.”

Xander pats Christian’s shoulder, a gesture both supportive and lightly teasing. Christian keeps smiling, and he says, “I think it’s good. You only – you surprised me, last time.”

“Yeah?” Xander asks, “The kinky stuff freaked you out?”

“Eh,” Christian makes an iffy hand motion. “Hard to feel sexy when you worry your pitcher is going to pull muscles in his shoulder.”

When Nate knocks on the door, it’s Sandy who lets them in; Sandy’s the only one still dressed. Jackie’s in the corner putting his clothes back on, and he gives a little wave to the newcomers. Joe is spread eagle on the bed, staring wistfully at the ceiling. He’s still wearing his t-shirt, at least to the extent that his head and arms are through the right holes – it’s not covering anything though, and his socks have found their way to the bedroom floor. Benny is sitting upright on the daybed, but he’s wearing absolutely nothing.

“Finally,” Joe groans. He leans up and braces himself on his elbows to stare them down. “Who’s first? C’mere, Vaz. You want me on my back or my front?”

 

This second course goes by at a steadier clip than the warm-up. Joe grumbles his satisfaction when he finally gets Christian’s cock inside him, and from that point things become simpler. It’s just a regular fuck, with Christian facing Joe, asking him, “do you like this? Does this feel good?” and Joe urging him to keep going. They fuck till Christian cums – Christian kisses Joe’s collarbone but not his lips, and Joe gives a breathy “Thank you,” when Christian pulls out.

The relationship between Joe and Christian doesn’t compare to that between Joe and Sandy. On the field they work together fine, but the whole sexuality thing isn’t really something that’s on Christian’s radar the way it is for Sandy. The fact that Christian consents to fuck Joe at _all_ says a lot about how much Christian cares for him, to do something like this despite his preoccupations about it.

When the condom’s disposed of, Sandy goes over and claps Christian on the back, for a job well done, and Christian just kind of grins and shoves him away. Then he pulls his pants back on and stands by the door for a moment, looking at Joe with a touch of softness in his eyes. Joe smiles at him, and then Christian nods, and heads back downstairs to join Jackie and the others.

Xander climbs on the bed and grabs Joe by the thighs to pull him closer.  Neither Christian nor Xander fuck very harshly, though Xander is a little freer about moving Joe around where he wants him, which Joe seems to like a lot.

Nate’s back on the daybed, with a lapful of Benintendi, though this time it’s more just naked cuddling than anyone actually trying to get off. For a while there, it looked like Benny and Brock were going to stick together watching the show on the bed, but Brock couldn’t stand just _watching._ When Xander got up there, so did Brock, pulling Joe’s head and shoulders into his lap, petting Joe’s hair while he gets fucked, encouraging Xander to go harder. Something about Brock’s presence and encouragement has Joe softening up even more, his voice getting softer, his eyes getting brighter. It’s like… with Brock here, Joe doesn’t have to be so demanding of whoever’s topping him – Brock will be demanding on his behalf, and Joe can just relax and _take_ it.

"You always need to be _involved,_ don't you, Brock?" Benny taunts from his vantage point, tucked in the curve of Nate's body. "You just can’t wait your turn like everyone else."

“Nope, no I can’t,” Brock agrees without missing a beat, a smirk on his lips. "I like to be involved." Brock then takes this opportunity to press a few fingers against Joe’s mouth, until Joe opens up to suck on them, gazing up at Brock.

"Leave him alone," Xander chides Benny, then fucks his hips against Joe, making Joe gasp around Brock’s fingers and tilt his head back against his stomach. "He can't help himself, he’s an attention-whore.”

Brock scoffs, “Who are you calling a whore? I’ve still got all my clothes on.”

“Yeah but you’ve got your fingers in his mouth,” says Benny, “like you just had to find a way that _you_ could fuck him _too._ ”

“That’s okay; he likes having me around. Don’t you, Joe?” Brock gestures for Xander to pause his thrusting for a moment, so Brock can use spit-soaked fingers to grip Joe under the armpits and lift him into more of a sitting position, leaning back against Brock’s chest. The movement, the way it shifts the position of Xander’s cock inside him, makes Joe groan – he’s starting to sweat, his skin is flushed pink now. “You like when I take care of you?” Brock prompts again.

Joe nods – wordless, like he’s only barely paying attention to the conversation, so focused instead on the sensation of being fucked. Xander starts up again, pushing Joe’s thighs back towards his chest so his ass is more accessible.

This is good; this is what Nate and Joe both look for in a sexual encounter, a space where they can chip away at Joe’s ego until he’s raw, needy, and uninhibited. Now that they’ve reached this point, they can progress to the middle of the lineup – Mitch and Sale in particular – without Joe feeling threatened. Usually he’d need to reassert himself around them, he wouldn’t like them talking down to him – he needs to be at this level of _relaxed_ in order to submit to them.

Xander cums. Under his breath, as he comes down, he says something to Joe. Nate doesn’t catch what was said, but he sees Joe give a dreamy smile, and Brock is grinning.

When Xander’s pulling off the condom, Mitch and Blake are already at the door. Christian must’ve sent them up – as Xander passes them to leave the room, they exchange high-fives and half-hugs as if Xander just ran the bases.

As they undress, Joe makes a soft noise on the bed. Brock is idly massaging Joe’s chest, his nipples, and Joe has his head tipped back against Brock and his eyes shut, focused on the sensation. It’s a good look on them.

Mitch takes the bed. As he settles between Joe’s legs, he gives the outside of Joe’s thigh a firm pat, and that gets Joe to open his eyes. “Well, hi there, sweetheart,” Mitch croons. “Yeah, let me see those pretty eyes.”

At that tone of voice, Joe averts his eyes. “Mitch…” he mumbles, “just fuck me…” which is far more than Nate expected him to be able to say at this point. And the tone even – like he still managed to work himself up to a little bit of embarrassment, at the way Mitch is talking to him.

Well, that ignites something in Mitch. “You tryin’ to rush me, babygirl?” he asks – that word, _babygirl,_ has Joe’s cock twitching. Blake gives a little whistle, an _oh, you’ve done it now_ sound. “You tryin’ to tell me how to do my job? No, no, come here – Brock, give me a hand, will you?” Together they flip Joe onto his stomach.

Brock’s positioning at Joe’s front is awkward, at this point. He pushes a pillow under Joe’s chest, and then he backs off a bit, pressing his back against the headboard to give Mitch and Joe room. The smart thing to do at this point would be to just get off the fucking bed and let them do their thing. But this is Brock and he’s… Benny was right, that Brock just needs to feel involved. He just pulls his knees to his chest and watches.

And Mitch sure is someone worth watching. Mitch is an expert in two things: baseball, and porn. The pageantry of sexual dominance comes easy to him when he starts imitating whatever films he’s been watching since grade school. Words like “babygirl” and “pussy” slip into his lexicon when he fucks Joe, and that’s not a thing that Joe’s into, usually, but damn if it doesn’t get him hard when it’s Mitch saying them. And Mitch is good at setting his own pace when he gets into a scene.

He rolls the condom on, and then he inches closer to Joe. He holds his cock in one hand, and he nudges it against Joe’s cheeks, hot and heavy, just kind of showing Joe it’s there, making Joe squirm against the pillows. “This is what you want, isn’t it?” Mitch drawls, “You want my big, fat cock in your pussy?”

Joe grunts, shifts his hips back enticingly.

“Come on,” says Mitch. “Say it, sweetheart.”

“I’m not saying that,” Joe growls against the sheets, and Mitch’s hand comes down _hard_ on his ass, makes him flinch, and whine.

And Nate’s pretty sure Mitch is going to tell him to _say it_ again _,_ but that’s not a good tack. Even needy and desperate like this, Joe’s not gonna say a line like that unless it’s of his own volition. Something about the submissive aspect, or the gendered aspect – no, Joe’ll dig his heels in on this, and Nate wants to keep it that way. Let him have his boundaries; they’re good for him. Nate gives a sharp whistle through his teeth before Mitch can say anything, and Mitch perks up and looks at Nate like a startled meerkat. _Leave it,_ Nate mouths at him.

Mitch nods. Instead of prompting Joe again, he just smacks his ass, makes Joe whimper. A third time, and Joe’s gasping _“Fuck_ me…”

Another smack has Joe _groaning,_ rutting against the pillow. Mitch tells him, “Ask nicely, sweetheart.”

Smack. “Please…” Joe pants, “please, Mitch, fuck me…” and he even punctuates it by spreading his knees wider, getting his newly-reddened cheeks to spread a bit and entice Mitch.

That’s good enough for Mitch – he slides home, and the sound that Joe makes is like rapture.

…

Mitch makes Joe cum – he reaches around Joe to tug on his cock, and it doesn’t take much to push Joe over the edge. A few strokes after, and Mitch finishes too. Before he pulls out, he leans forward to kiss Joe, slowly, wetly. “So good, sweetheart,” Mitch whispers, between kisses. “So good.”

When Mitch climbs out of the bed, Blake and Brock work together to roll Joe onto his back again. Both boys are smiling at Joe, the way he’s all fucked out again, his breathing deep and satisfied. “You did a number on him, Mitch,” says Blake.

Mitch grimaces. “Oof, did I tucker him out? Sorry, Swi, I’ll blow you if he’s too tired for you.”

“…oh, _fuck_ you, Mitch…” Joe grumbles low, “Can’t you give me… two seconds… before you start stealing all my cock?”

“Don’t let him rest, boys,” Sandy cuts in. “We want him to tap out? Don’t you go easy on him.”

“Sandy’s right,” Nate agrees. “Blake, you’re up.”

Now Blake, he studies Joe for a second – the way his eyes are shut, the way his whole abdomen rises and falls with his breaths, the way his body looks like he just melted into the bed. And Blake looks back at Nate and Sandy – they nod at him, to encourage him. And then Blake looks at Brock, who gestures vaguely down at Joe and says, “He’s all yours, Swi.”

“Well,” says Blake. “If you say so.”  And then he grabs Joe’s legs, to slide him closer.

“Jesus Christ,” Joe groans, but he doesn’t tap the bed. He doesn’t even open his eyes, really, he just lets Blake manhandle him into place. “Go gentle, kid,” he says.

“Why?” Blake asks.

Joe cracks open one eye to peer up at him. Then he kind of slurs out, “Why? Because I fucking told you to, and it’s _my_ fucking asshole.”

If Nate had even the slightest hint of doubt about Joe’s consent in the present moment, he wouldn’t say this, but: “Don’t listen to him, Blake,” he says.

“Oh, _shut up_ , Evo,” Joe spits out.

“Quit telling him what to do, Joey, you’re confusing him.”

“He _asked_ me!”

“Hey, Joe?” Blake cuts into their bickering. Joe looks at him, and Blake leans forward, over Joe’s body to get right into his face. And Blake whispers, “I’m, uh, I’m pretty sure you’re my pitcher, and I don’t take orders from you.”

Sandy whistles. Mitch is laughing, “Blakey-boy’s got a bit of spine!”

Joe just stares at him, and some of the previous submissive energy returns to his eyes. He bites his lower lip, before saying a simple, “Oh.”

...

“Hey, Nate, can I suck you off?” The further the evening has progressed, the more relaxed and confident Benny has become. The way he’s looking at Nate now – well, Nate would expect that look after a homer or a game-saving catch, but not during an extracurricular team activity. It’s not like Benny has any kind of inherent seniority on the team. He’s waggling his eyebrows at Nate, waiting for a response, and it’s sort of an out-of-body moment for Nate, trying to read where the hell this cockiness came from.

He glances back to the bed. Joe is on his back – he’s not moving much anymore, his body is exhausted – but he rolls his face towards the guys on the daybed, not saying anything but clearly listening, even as Blake fucks into him and makes the bed shake. Brock also has turned his face slightly towards them – he’s keeping his eyes on Joe but he’s quieted down, clearly eavesdropping on this other conversation.

Nate looks down at Benny again: naked, half-hard and still sticky from earlier. Eager, but going about it a strange way that’s tripping off all the warning bells in Nate’s head. “Why?” Nate asks.

“Find out if maybe I’m good at it?” offers Benny, “Maybe I can give Joe a run for his money.”

 _“God_ , you’re hot,” Blake moans against Joe’s neck, and he kisses there, and Joe says nothing.

To Benny, Nate says, “No.”  He makes sure he says it just loud enough for Joe and Brock to hear – in sync, both of their faces turn back to Blake. That’s the only outward clue that they were paying attention.

Benny looks stricken – almost all the easy confidence disappears in favor of the demeanor of a man who’s just found himself standing on the edge of a cliff. “Oh,” says Benny.

Nate pats Benny’s flank, then stands up off the daybed. “Let’s go talk outside.”

“Oh.” Benny’s brows knit in worry. He slowly pulls himself to his feet – some of the bashfulness returns to his body language, as he half-heartedly covers himself with his hand. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to— I didn’t realize—”

“We’ll talk outside,” Nate says again. “You go out, I’ll meet you in a second.”

The blush blooms over Benny’s cheeks, and his throat, and down his chest. “Okay,” he says, and he rushes out of the room.

Nate stands near the bed. Joe is looking up at him. At this angle, Joe’s kind of looking down his nose at Nate. His eyes are hardly open – they shine in the lamplight, watery and tired, and a bit emotionally guarded. Like Joe is asking _what was that? Does that mean anything? Is he better than me?_ without saying anything at all, like Joe is afraid to even ask the questions out loud, like it admits too much vulnerability.

Nate touches Blake’s arm, so as not to startle him. Blake’s thrusts stop, and he looks over his shoulder. When he sees it’s Nate, he freezes, and he pulls out of Joe entirely – Joe makes a face, rolls his eyes. “Is something wrong?” Blake asks.

“No, nothing’s wrong. I’m gonna step out for a second. Sandy’s here.”

“Oh,” says Blake. “Alright.” He seems a little too keyed up to mind. His cock is twitching between his legs, at this reminder that he’s being watched.

“Nate,” Brock cuts in from the head of the bed. You can tell he’s being serious because he’s using first names. “I don’t know what just happened, but if you need someone to talk to him, I can—”

“No, buddy,” Nate shakes his head, “it’s fine, he didn’t do anything wrong, I just need to talk to him privately. Don’t worry about it.”

Brock doesn’t seem to trust this answer. He’s protective of Benny – it’s actually really sweet, how close they are, how Brock really took the kid under his wing. But this… better to chat with Benny alone, and leave Brock with Joe. Because Joe knows how much Brock cares about Benny, and so the fact that Brock stays will tell Joe that he’s still the center of…

It’s a very delicate little spider’s web of emotions that Nate’s trying to manage, here.

He shuts the door of the bedroom softly behind him. Abruptly he remembers that he’s still fully clothed, and he hasn’t cum once, and Benny is… he’s got his arms crossed in front of himself, his whole body hunched over, exposed and vulnerable.

“Hey,” says Benny, quickly, “If I overstepped a boundary or something I’m so sorry, I didn’t know, I shouldn’t have assumed—”

“I’m not mad, or anything,” Nate starts off reassuring him, “everything’s fine, Benny, it’s okay. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Oh.” Benny still looks stiff, and distraught. He shifts his weight from one bare foot to the other. “Then what…?”

“You asked if you could blow me,” Nate says, gently. “Can you tell me why?”

Benny’s arms tighten around himself, like he’s hugging himself for comfort. “Um,” he says, “well I’ve never really – I’ve done things with Joe, and with, with Brock, but I’ve never really… so I wanted to try something new.”

“Why else?”

“Is there – is this a trick question?”

Nate feels bad for working the kid up like this – he wants this to be a frank, gentle conversation about boundaries and feelings, but Benny’s freaking out like he’s in trouble. “No, no,” Nate reaches out, touches Benny’s shoulder and Benny leans into it, desperate for the assurance that he’s still wanted. “It’s just… did it have something to do with Joe?”

Benny worries his lip, thoughtfully. “Everyone’s focused on him, I guess,” he says. “He knows he doesn’t need to work for it, and it makes it easy for him to tease and complain about it. And I just thought – make him a little jealous? Make it a little competitive? It could be fun. But I totally understand if that wasn’t my place, to make a move like that, I’m sorry—”

Nate shushes him, squeezes his shoulder. “No, it’s not that. You’re fine, Benny, and you’re right that it was a clever idea. I think earlier, when you had him begging – that was exciting, wasn’t it?”

Benny hesitates, then cautiously nods.

“It’s exciting for me, too. I get that feeling a lot. And, you know, maybe another day this little competition thing would be fun! It’s not a bad idea.” He brushes hair from Benny’s face, cups his cheek, just to drive home the fact that… he still feels affection towards Benny, and Benny has no reason to worry. “It’s not.”

“Okay,” says Benny.

Nate lets out a long breath, lets the tension seep out of his shoulders. “It’s just,” he admits softly, “If you did this thing, if you riled Joe up, it’d definitely work. He’d get all reckless and eager to please. He’d feel like he needed to earn our attention. And I just… really don’t want that for him, tonight. With all this change and stress coming in spring… I want tonight to be for him. I want tonight to feel good. I don’t want him to feel threatened, or like he has to earn anything – to me, he already deserves everything.”

Benny swallows, and his breath hitches. “God, Nate,” he says, “God you’re so sweet. I really love that. I see what you meant about Joe. I knew it would upset him, and that’s _why_ I wanted to do it, but… I see how that could hurt him, and that’s not really what I want either. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Benny might just be saying all that because he’s desperate to stay on Nate’s good side, but Nate gives him the benefit of the doubt and takes it at face value. “You were getting excited,” Nate says. “It’s okay. In the future I just want you to think twice before you do stuff like that, think twice about whether the target of your provocation is really in the best state of mind to be provoked. I just don’t think Joe’s ready for a game like that right now.”

After a moment of hesitation, Benny steps closer to Nate, and goes for a hug. Nate hugs him back, squeezing his arms around Benny’s warm, naked body.

“I think tonight’s gonna be rough for him,” Nate murmurs against Benny’s shoulder, and it’s not until he says the words out loud that he realizes how sure he is of that outcome. “When it’s all over, we should be there for him, okay? He likes you. You’re sweet to him.” _His trust is a valuable thing,_ Nate wants to add, but he thinks Benny’s already catching that message. _Don’t fuck it up._

“Yeah,” says Benny, and he pulls away. “Okay. That sounds good. Thanks, Nate.”

“Don’t mention it.” Nate pushes the door open again, and steps aside for Benny to enter first.

…

Sale puts Joe on his front. Puts a pillow under Joe’s hips to lift him. Fucks into him steadily, rhythmically. Impersonally.

Not like Sale’s an impersonal guy – he cares about Joe like he cares about all of them. But Sale’s approach to sex with Joe is something mechanical, forceful. A touch darker than what anyone else is comfortable with.

Sale is capable of softness, but not in a context like this. Not with Joe. Joe’s type of wily aggression irrevocably triggers Sale’s instinct for dominance. This cool, repetitive fucking – it’s the only way Sale knows how to be with Joe.

And Joe says he wants it. Even though Nate can tell how much it hurts Joe to be treated like a thing – Joe says he wants it, and what Joe says is what matters. He’s got his autonomy and he can do what he wants with it. Even if it means doing this thing with Sale.

It’s… it’s not Sale’s fault. The way Sale fucks Joe – it’s not what Joe wants, but it’s _adjacent_ to what he wants, it’s really _close_ , and for a long time this was the only way Joe could get that itch scratched. So it’s not Sale’s fault, that Joe kept coming back to this and wanting more.

Nate finds Benny’s hand, and squeezes it. Benny doesn’t say anything but he squeezes Nate’s hand back. And Nate watches Joe’s body language, watches Joe’s hands, just in case he taps out.

Joe flinches at something, and Nate goes tense. Sale slows his hips, rests a palm on Joe’s lower back. “You alright?” Sale asks Joe. “You need to stop?” His tone of voice is neutral, not soft like the way Nate and Sandy and everyone else like to talk to Joe. But at least he’s checking in – Sale is a good man, and he does care about Joe, and no matter how uncomfortable the whole situation makes him, Nate’s gotta remember that.

A bit lethargically, Joe shakes his head. “Keep going,” he slurs out, and Sale doesn’t need to be told twice.

“Hey,” says Brock. Between thrusts of Sale’s hips, Brock lifts Joe up a bit, so they’re face to face and he can look into Joe’s eyes.

Joe offers Brock a weary smile.

Brock kisses him on the nose. “Alright,” he drawls. “Hang in there, darling.”

On the daybed, Sandy lifts his knees up and crawls back there, between Nate and Benny and the window. Nate doesn’t want to crane his neck to watch Sandy (partly because he doesn’t want to miss any signals from Joe), but peripherally he sees Benny smiling, and then he feels what must be Sandy’s hands on his back.

The strong grip of a catcher, massaging his shoulders. “Relax, stupid,” Sandy tells him. _“You_ usually hurt him way worse than this. He’ll be okay.”

And _that’s_ not reassuring at all – is this what it looks like, when Nate fucks Joe? No, it can’t… there’s an _intimacy_ during their scenes, and Sale’s approach is anything but intimate. Doesn’t the intimacy make it something different from this? Something that Joe wants, for its own sake, and not just because Nate’s willing to give it to him?

 

Then Price comes upstairs.

For some reason, _that_ helps Nate relax. Price has this energy… the only thing in the world that can actually make Price _worry_ is pitching. Other than that, nothing much gets under his skin. He takes pressure away from Nate, makes things seem like they’re going to be fine. His smile’s so warm it melts the world.

As he steps into the room, he pulls off his navy-blue cardigan, folding it and laying it out nicely atop the dresser. It’s this soft, warm, knit thing that feels significant now that Price has removed it, now that he’s rolling up the sleeves of his shirt. “How are we doing, here?”

Sale’s hips slow. The fact that he’s been going for this long is a rather impressive feat of stamina; almost ten minutes at this unyielding, metronomic pace without getting eager or loud about it, without even breaking a sweat. Again placing a hand at the small of Joe’s back to steady him, Sale turns to Price. “Fine, I think,” he says. “He’s not giving me any trouble.”

“And what about the cowboy?” Price perches on the edge of the bed – he pats a hand gently on Joe’s back in acknowledgement, but by _cowboy_ he means Brock, who beams. “You’re still dressed?” Price asks him, “You’ve been up here almost 90 minutes.”

“I’ve been busy!” Brock argues. “Our baby boy needed encouragement, not just another dick to suck.”

From below them all, Joe groans hoarsely, “I never said that. I don’t mind another… another dick to suck. C’mon.”

Price cocks an eyebrow at Brock, meaningfully. “Well, there you go;” he says, “you’ve gotta ask him what he wants.”

Brock gives the exposed side of Joe’s face a little poke. Joe doesn’t move, and Brock sighs down at him. “Don’t be silly, doll, you can hardly lift your head.”

“Says who?”

“Says me.”

“What do you know?” Joe grumbles. “Show me your dick and we’ll find out how well I can lift my head, asshole.”

“That’s the thing, Brock,” Price interjects, running his fingers down the line of Joe’s spine, from between his shoulder blades and then down every notch of bone until reaching the slick opening of his hole, fluttering in the absence of Sale’s cock. Then Price presses two fingers into his hole, and jabs harshly at his prostate. Joe makes a choked noise, his hips flinching open. “You have to understand—” Price murmurs, “the cumslut _knows_ what he wants.”

Sale’s dick twitches in the air. “Joe, you let him call you that?”

Joe huffs irritably against the sheets. “…the fuck am I supposed to say? He’s right.”

“Oh, Jesus,” says Brock.

Softly, in a breath against Nate’s ear, Sandy asks, “You good now, _hermano?”_   His hands have gone still, resting against Nate’s shoulders.

Listening to the banter on the bed has relaxed Nate, especially the biting backtalk from Joe. It reassures him that Joe is coherent, that Sale’s methods aren’t pushing him into one of those dark places in his head he sometimes winds up stuck in. It cuts through a lot of the tension in the room. Consciously, Nate forces himself to relax his death grip on Benny’s fingers. He then takes a deep breath. “Yeah,” he says, “yeah, I’m good. Thanks.”

“No problem.”

 

So… this is a level of physical decadence that Nate never expected to personally witness. It took a little convincing from Price to set it up – Price’s fingers sliding up beneath Sale’s sweatshirt, up the hot skin of his stomach, seductively. “Come on,” Price had purred, “I know how you like it, Chris. I know what’s good for you.”

So Price is fucking Sale, who is fucking Joe, who is sucking off Brock. All like some sort of ornate, erotic Baroque painting – four bodies, each pleasuring the next and being pleasured in return. It’s… probably the most orgiastic single event to ever take place under this roof.

Sale’s not handling it too well. Where before he was stiff-lipped and mechanical, now he’s trembling throughout his body. To be caught between the tight heat of Joe’s hole, and the slow, even slide of Price’s dick inside him… it’s far more than he can handle, making him bend over at the waist, stifling his moans at the back of Joe’s shoulder.

The things Price is whispering to Sale are too quiet for Nate to make out, but it’s something affectionate, something that has Price smirking around his words, kissing Sale’s neck, nibbling at the lobe of his ear.

When Price kicks his hips forward forcefully, the ripple between their bodies is visible. Joe’s shout is muffled into a choking noise around the width of Brock’s dick.

“This is what a winning team is made of,” Price jokes. “Synchronicity.”

Joe pulls off of Brock’s dick only long enough to give a scratchy whispered “Fuck you,” before returning to his work. Between Joe’s legs, Nate can spot the dribble of precum onto the bed.

It’s all… so much.

…

It’s not like he’s in love with Joe. It’s not like they’re in love with each other. It’s not like that at all.

But Nate does feel like they have something special between them. When Nate takes on the responsibility of organizing the whole gangbang, it’s not just because it happens to be at his house, and during his party, and on his birthday. It’s also because it’s his _right –_ he’s the last authority on Joe. In a certain, special way, Joe _belongs_ to Nate.

And it’s not like Nate wants it to be an exclusive, defined relationship. It’s not like Nate wants… anything, really.

Just because he has all these feelings about Joe doesn’t mean they need to define it.

And maybe Joe wouldn’t even want that.

It’s just…

When Nate’s watching Joe get fucked, especially this late in the game, when Joe’s tired, and the sex comes piled with erotic disrespect… it makes Nate want to grab Joe and run away with him. Possess him, be alone with him, make love to him. And, you know, Nate… he’s got a right to be the organizer of the orgy, sure, but he doesn’t really have a right to be jealous? He doesn’t really have a right to be possessive of Joe’s time? He certainly doesn’t have a right to make love to Joe, exclusively.

He isn’t even sure if he really _wants_ that kind of exclusivity, or if he just _thinks_ he does, in this moment.

But there’s a longing that’s taken root in his chest, watching Joe choke and squirm, watching tears fall down his face.

Nate takes solace in the fact that they’re running out of bodies, now. After this group is done… either Mookie or Nate will manage to make Joe tap out, and this will all be over.

…

Sale is the first to cum. Nate watches the flutter of his hips, the way his eyes roll back… and Price steps backwards and pulls Sale with him, out of Joe’s body. Price fucks Sale rapidly through his orgasm, standing upright, and then Price follows him over the edge with a satisfied groan bitten into the skin of Sale’s back. Brock gives Joe a warning when he’s close, and before there’s any response from Joe, Benny interrupts – “Hold him down,” he tells Brock, “hold him down on your cock and make him swallow; that’s how he likes it.”

As much as it makes Nate uncomfortable to watch it happen, Benny isn’t _wrong._ When Brock spills down Joe’s throat, Joe’s cock spasms against the sheets, dribbling mostly precum. It’s the third time he’s cum tonight.

When Sale and Price are finished, they dress themselves and head downstairs to retrieve Mookie. There was a moment before they left, though, where Sale was standing in the doorway waiting for Price to finish pulling his cardigan back on, and he reached out to brush his knuckles against the soft, merino stitches. Price smiled up at him, and pressed a kiss to those knuckles, just before they headed down the stairs.

Joe is boneless in the middle of the bed, where Brock left him.

Nate wants to stand up and crawl onto the bed himself, cradle Joe to his chest, ask him how he’s doing, tell him it’s all over. But if he does that, he won’t be able to let go when Joe inevitably says that he wants to _keep going._ Nate knows he wouldn’t be able to let go, if he caves now and tries to touch Joe. So he stays on the bed. “Hey, Sandy?” he asks instead. “Could you get him a Gatorade? Something to wash it down?”

Sandy agrees, and fetches the drink.

Brock is also looking blissed out, leaning back against the headboard. He moves his legs to make room for Sandy, but awkwardly, like his body still wants to be limp, post-orgasm.

Sandy helps Joe sit up, and tilts the bottle to his lips so Joe doesn’t need to bother lifting his arms. It’s a weirdly maternal position, but Sandy never minds that sort of thing – it’s in his nature. “Do you want to be finished, now?” Sandy asks, as he re-caps the bottle.

“No,” Joe says. His voice sounds even rougher after Brock.

“Are you sure?” Sandy rubs up and down Joe’s naked back in smooth circles – Nate doesn’t remember when exactly Joe lost his shirt, but it’s now bunched up at the base of the pillows. “You sound very tired, Joe. You had a very impressive run. Now it seems like it’s time to be done.”

Joe looks at Nate, and his gaze hardens. “No. Nate said tonight’s the night you’ll all finally listen to me. I say we keep going, so we keep going.”

“Even if it’s Mookie next?” Nate warns, helplessly.

“I want it,” Joe growls, with determination in the set of his jaw.

 

Mookie doesn’t set out to be so rough. In fact, he’s sweet and enthusiastic about everything. Not a dominant-leaning bone in that kid’s body, he’s just a friendly guy. But he happens to be capable of some real powerfucking, and he knows Joe likes that, so…

When Mookie comes up, and starts taking off his shirt, Nate catches his gaze. “Just make him tap out,” Nate tells him. “End this.”

Mookie quirks a grin. “You know, Evo, after Game Three, I figured you were _good_ at marathon stamina.”

With his face half-buried against a pillow, Joe says, “He hasn’t even cum once yet, he’s just being a baby.”

“Am I the one you’re holding out for?” Nate counters, “Because _goddamn_ it, Joey, you can suck me off right this second if it means we can end this before you get seriously hurt.”

“Shut up, I’m not getting hurt,” Joe grumbles. He’s only got one eye above the height of the pillow, and he opens it a fraction to squint at Nate. “It’s just Mookie, it’s not a fuckin’ pitch cannon. Unclench your asshole.”

Well. At least with Joe being this much of a dick, it won’t be too hard for Nate to want to fuck him into submission. Eventually.

Still, Mookie’s turn is just… hard to watch.

Hard to listen to, really.

Because each snap of Mookie’s hips makes Joe cry out.

Whatever happened with Brock and Sale and Price… it peeled away the last layer of composure, and now it’s just _noise_ , yelps of pain, the sick smack of skin against skin. And it’s obviously… obviously not _all_ pain. There are groans of _yes,_ and _give it to me_ interspersed – Joe knows he needs Mookie to buy-in to this, the idea that Joe wants this for the sexual gratification and not for some bizarre ritual of self-punishment.

It’s just hard to watch.

Nate confirms that Sandy’s watching Joe, and since he is… Nate buries his face against Benny’s hair, instead.

 

Joe comes for the fourth time with Mookie’s dick buried inside him, and that’s when it really starts feeling like the beginning of the end. That orgasm is the one that makes Joe _sob,_ makes the tears start down his face. Mookie stops thrusting, takes a second to enjoy the way Joe’s hole milks his cock. But then he hears the sounds Joe is still making, afterwards… the whimpering, the sniffling. “Oh God,” Mookie says, “baby, are you alright?”

Nate stares at what’s visible of Joe’s face. His skin is all flushed red, and his watery eyes are trained fiercely on the hem of the bath towel below him. He opens his mouth to respond to Mookie but all that comes out is a choked-off whine – so he shuts his mouth. He nods.

Mookie makes a face. “Oh, honey, I think you’re done.”

Joe lifts his head and cranes his neck backwards. His eyes just skim right over Nate – he picks out Sandy, and stares him down, balefully.

With an eye roll, and a heavy sigh, Sandy translates: “He wants to keep going.”

Suspiciously, Mookie runs a finger down the plush roundness of Joe’s asscheek. “You’re really alright?”  Mookie’s more willing to take what Joe says at face value than Nate and Sandy are. Seems like, if nothing else, Mookie trusts that Joe Kelly likes to push himself to the goddamn limit.

Joe makes a pathetic sound with his forehead pressed down against the towel, and he gives Mookie a thumbs up.

Well. Mookie takes the order as it is. He slows down, though, conscious of the tenderness Joe must feel at this point. Slowly, smoothly, in and out… he pops the cap off the lube to drizzle more across the length of his dick, and the sensation of the cool slick against his hole makes Joe moan sharply – still with his thumb up, though his wrist is now resting on the bed.

After a few moments of Mookie’s gentle pace, Joe fucks his hips back. “Come on,” he chokes out.

“You,” Mookie mutters, “are such a fucking masochist.”

But he takes the hint. And they resume their brutal pace, punctuated by Joe’s whimpers, and the weak reassurance of his thumb pointed towards the ceiling.

…

The gagging sound Joe makes around Benny’s dick is probably the ugliest sound Nate has ever heard. “This is a bad idea,” Benny says.

Joe is holding onto Benny’s ankles, urgently – he doesn’t have the strength left to grab at Benny’s hips, but the message of the insistent grip at Benny’s ankles is the same: _Give me more; I can take it._ Benny’s balls hang low, resting at the bridge of Joe’s nose.

“Yeah,” Nate agrees, smartly. With gentle fingers, he lifts up Joe’s limp, inflamed cock to inspect it. It’s so… little, and flaccid, and probably torturously oversensitive if Joe’s whimpers are anything to go by. But then Benny presses down Joe’s throat, and Joe’s quiet again.

Nate feels numb to the empathy triggered by Joe’s pain. It’s all just kind of blurring together.

“Yeah,” he says again, meaninglessly. “Benny, help me flip him over.”

Benny pulls out, and they put Joe on his stomach again – Benny’s going to have to sit with his ass on the bed in order to keep fucking Joe’s mouth, because there’s no way Joe’s got any upper-body strength left to hold himself upright for kneeling. Joe’s ragdoll-limp when they move him – he just opens his mouth obligingly to get back to work on Benny’s dick.

Nate parts Joe’s cheeks, to look at his hole. Everyone used a condom, so all the slickness dribbling out of him is just copious amounts of lube, and the rim of his hole is stretched, wrinkled flat like pussy lips. He’s a wreck; they’ve wrecked him. Nate’s only seen bodies that look like this in porn.

It twitches.

Nate _smacks_ Joe’s cheek, right in the reddened imprint of Mitch’s fingers from before, and Joe makes a choking noise before Benny pulls out of him. Benny lifts Joe up under the armpits a few inches so he can cough. “Jesus,” Benny says, over the coughing, “warn a guy first, Evo.”

From the daybed, Sandy and Brock snicker a little bit.

Nate’s not really listening. “Joey,” he says, darkly. “How many cocks did you suck?”

Joe doesn’t say anything. With his wrecked voice, he manages to hum a noise that sounds approximately like _I don’t know,_ resting his face against the warmth of Benny’s thigh. Benny combs fingers through his hair.

“Three,” Nate informs him. Then he spanks Joe, hard, to punctuate each name: “Jackie, Brock, and now Benny.” Each impact makes Joe’s body flinch, makes Joe make a _guh_ noise near Benny’s crotch.

“Four, actually,” Sandy interjects, helpfully. “At the beginning before you came upstairs.”

A fourth smack, then. “And Sandy.”

Benny peers down at Joe’s face. “He’s crying again.”

Nate pats the back of Joe’s thigh – expecting another slap, Joe flinched, but then he shivers at the gentle touch. “He knows how to tap out,” Nate says, woodenly. “Right, Joey?”

An affirmative sound – too quiet for Nate to hear, but Benny hears it and nods.

So Nate keeps going – mechanically, with no small amount of genuine fury in his heart. “How many people fucked your ass?” Of course, Joe doesn’t have an answer for this either. Probably so distraught he can’t count, can’t remember.  “Seven,” Nate answers, and delivers seven fierce slaps. “Christian, Xander, Mitch, Blake, Sale, Mookie, and _me,_ in a moment.”

A long, high whine from Joe at that promise.

Benny starts stroking himself, just centimeters from Joe’s face, and Joe is too wiped to even complain at Benny’s hand doing what Joe’s mouth had been meant to do.

“How many times did you cum, Joey?”

He moans, and his legs part a little bit, wantonly.

“Four, Joey, that’s my count. Is that right?” Nate doesn’t wait for a response – he smacks him, “One, two, three, four.”

Joe’s ass is _red_ , now, and fiery-hot to the touch. You know. A pitcher’s arm – good for spanking. That’s what they say.

“You cumslut,” Nate says, kneading his fingers into meat of Joe’s cheeks, rubbing pain into Joe’s skin like a balm. “You needy whore.” He spits out those labels with a kind of disgusted awe.

 _“Nate,”_ Joe cries, breathy and broken into Benny’s skin. “Nate, _fuck me_ …”

“Will you tap out?” Nate demands, but Joe just sobs wetly. “Will you tap out, Joey?”

There’s no answer. Of course there’s no answer – Joe is a stupid, stubborn _prick_ till the end.

Nate pushes his cock inside Joe without preamble, fucking him _hard,_ and Joe lets out a loud, strangled, full-voiced _scream._

There’s some kind of scrambling sound from downstairs, the thump of feet against hardwood. “Tap out,” Nate tells Joe, with his hard cock buried as deep as it’ll go inside. “Tap out. You’re done.”

“N-no… no…”

A stampede of bodies up the stairs, and then the door slams open. Eight worried faces trying to get a good look at what’s going on, what made Joe scream like that, but Brock stands up off the daybed and he’s got two hands up, wordlessly telling them to wait.

“Tap _out!”_ Nate yells.

 _“No,”_ Joe wails, his breath hitching, “Fuck me... _Nate…_ ”

 

Well, it doesn’t take long. Nate’s been hard for like three hours now, it only takes a few thrusts for him to climax. Joe groans, long and low. It’s like he’s past sobbing, now, and he’s gone straight to ghoulish moaning, incoherent.

Benny also cums – shoots over Joe’s face – sticky, wet ropes of cum on Joe’s forehead, mixing with the watery tears in his lashes, in his open mouth.

“Tap out.” Nate growls.

A helpless sob from Joe, the tremble of his shoulders.

Nate raises his hand like the wind-up of a pitch, and he brings it down on Joe’s ass in a terrible, furious slap. “Tap. Out.”

Weeping heavily, Joe reaches out and finally taps his palm twice against the bed.

Nate lets out a long breath. The other men in the room make sounds of various levels of enthusiasm – mostly relief, that it’s over.  Like a game where they managed to keep a one-run lead through the last out in the ninth – it’s just… a weight, off everyone’s shoulders. Like they didn’t think they’d make it.

Sandy stands up, and he takes over, while Nate just falls forward, numbly, and wraps his arms around Joey, nuzzling him, and listening to him cry.

…

The first time they fucked hard was in August after Nate had a nasty start against Tampa Bay. Something about throwing pitches to those guys who had taken care of him when he was injured, who had made such an effort to keep him involved in the clubhouse while he spent the entire season on the bench… and now he was pitching against them and he couldn’t keep it together. Gave up eight hits in four innings. Joe took over for the fifth and gave up a single, but then he snagged the pickoff at first base. Bauers grounded out, and then Joe had the good sense to walk Kiermaier on the 3-2, and… Joe held everything together, for Hembree to take over in the sixth.

Nate had cornered Joe in the lockers. “If you let me,” he’d growled out, “I’ll fuck you like I hate you. I don’t hate you, but God I want to pretend I do, for like an hour, if you’ll let me.”

Joe went and talked it over with Sandy, and then he came back to Nate with a grin and an apprehensive nod.

Well, Nate had sold his Tampa Bay apartment two months prior, so he didn’t have anywhere private to fuck Joe Kelly (now that he had decided to fuck Joe Kelly.) They took it back to the hotel. Joe and Sandy were sharing a suite. Benintendi was there – Nate doesn’t know who invited him. There was an exchange of safewords, and an agreement that Sandy and Benintendi would watch, so things didn’t get out of hand.

For like an hour, Nate fucked Joe like he hated him. And Joe fucked back in the same way. There were fingernail scratches up and down Nate’s back. Teeth marks against his chest. Some blood in Joe’s mouth ‘cause he bit through the inside of his cheek.

When they had both cum, Nate pulled out and stared down at Joe, feeling wild and rough and not at all prepared to apologize for what he’d just done in even the most perfunctory capacity. Joe wasn’t looking at him – was breathing heavily, heaving dry-eyed whimpers and staring at the wall.

Sandy had stepped in. Pulled Nate away. “Alright,” he’d said, with understanding. “Go with Benny.”

Nate had followed Benintendi out of the room without questioning it, and then he sat on the couch where Benintendi told him to. The door shut behind them, so Sandy and Joe were alone together.

For like an hour, Benny talked to Nate. Little, soft, irrelevant conversation. If Nate remembers correctly – which, he probably doesn’t – he thinks Benny spent almost all of that time talking about _Game of Thrones_. And Benny was rubbing circles in Nate’s back. Telling him how to breathe deeply.

Presumably, the same sort of thing was going on behind that shut door, between Sandy and Joe.

And then, eventually, Joe came out of the room, dressed in soft flannel pants and an old t-shirt. Nate stood up to greet him, like you’d stand up to greet the bride at a wedding – it was a silly, instinctive move. But Joe came right up to him, and he looked up at Nate, and he asked, “We good?”

Nate remembers nodding, dumbly, and then he asked in return, “Are you… good with me?”

Joe nodded and smiled a little.

It was one in the morning, by that point. Sandy excused himself and retired to sleep, Benny pressed a kiss against Joe’s cheek before doing the same, retreating down the hall to wherever his room was supposed to be. Joe fished two packets of instant hot cocoa out of the complimentary collection of coffees and teas and paper cups. Nate offered to leave, but Joe told him to sit and put something on the TV.

“We need to… you know,” said Joe, waving a hand vaguely. And when Nate looked at him blankly, Joe continued, “Decompress. I want to cuddle, and I think you just bruised my ass, so I figure you owe me, and you’re gonna sit on that couch till I tell you I’m through with you.”

“Oh,” Nate responded. “I would have stayed anyway; you don’t need to guilt me.”

“Just laying my cards on the table. Do you prefer dark chocolate or milk chocolate? We’ve got one of each.”

Eventually they settled in together, cuddled close on the couch with Joe’s body fitting snugly against Nate’s side. They sipped their hot cocoas and they watch _Friends_ reruns, and they fell asleep on the couch, and it was…

It was something of a habit, after that.

The rough sex, the separate aftercare, the joint recovery period… hours spent with their bodies pressed close, reassuring each other that they didn’t hate one another.

So Nate has _never_ really experienced the process of giving Joey aftercare. Even though traditionally that would be his job, as the Dominant party… it’s just never happened that way; it never felt right or safe or good to do things that way. Until tonight.

Tonight’s different. When Joe finally taps out, Nate isn’t left feeling shaken up and violent and angry like usual. All he feels is _relief,_ and love, like all he wants is to be close to Joe, hold him, make the tears stop. He feels the way he imagines the Dominant party is _supposed_ to feel, this instinct to be a caretaker when one’s partner is at their most vulnerable.

And as for Joe – normally when they fuck rough, Joe can’t look at Nate afterwards. There’s still that lingering, emotionally-charged resentment leftover from their scene, and it takes time and concentrated effort for him to warm back up to Nate. But tonight… Joe’s fingers grasp helplessly in Nate’s direction, latching onto his shirt, and Nate pulls him closer, and Joe tucks his face under Nate’s chin and he _sobs_ Nate’s name _._

…

Thank God for Sandy. Thank God and Heaven for Sandy León.

Everything is blurry colors and faint voices, but the main voice is Sandy, giving out instructions. Idly, Nate thinks about how much he loves Sandy, loves that low baritone voice and the man behind it, the man who has earned Nate’s implicit trust hundreds of times over. Sandy’s telling someone to go wet a washcloth, and someone else to fetch the Gatorades, and someone else to start brewing tea, or clean up downstairs, or start setting up bedding for those choosing to sleep over. Usually these tasks would fall to the host, but… everyone seems to recognize that Nate’s primary job is to be here, with Joe, holding Joe, and… and Sandy’s facilitating that, because Sandy is… an angel.

Thank God for Benny.

Thank God for Benny, who curls up behind Joe, so that Joe is sandwiched in the warmth between Benny and Nate’s bodies. He spoons up behind Joe, strokes up and down Joe’s bicep slowly, hushing Joe in the softest, gentlest whisper. Benny had gotten caught up in the scene, earlier, in his competitive resentment of Joe… but that’s completely disappeared now in favor of the intent fondness in his eyes. Nate is glad that Benny has found himself again – this is more like him; this gentleness, this kindness.

Joe hasn’t stopped crying, and Nate thinks he isn’t likely to stop for a long time. So, thank God for Benny, for being there with Nate, so that Joe can be _held,_ on all sides.

Thank God for Jackie.

Thank God for Jackie, who climbs up onto the bed with a warm washcloth. Joe flinches when he feels it, but Jackie whispers, “It’s just me, we’re just going to clean you up, baby…”  and then he uses the washcloth to wipe away the cum from Joe’s face, from his lashes, from his hair. Likewise, the tear tracks are wiped clean, but they immediately start anew… Jackie can’t help but press a quick kiss to Joe’s forehead, which makes Joe huff out a broken noise, and blink up at Jackie with watery eyes.

Thank God for Jackie, who has this moment of eye contact with Joe, and yet doesn’t let it distract him from his task.

Jackie wipes away some of the cum and slick from around Joe’s overused cock, his stretched hole, his thighs… it must be an uncomfortable texture on such sensitive skin, but Joe’s so far gone now that he doesn’t seem to register it, or if he does, he just lets it happen, far more concerned with burying his damp face in Nate’s shirt.

Thank God for Mitch.

Thank God for Mitch, who decides that it’d be best to give the three on the bed some privacy, so Joe can cry himself out, or compose himself, or whatever it is that’s going to happen here. When things are more settled down, and the Gatorades and a tissue box are within reach, Mitch is the one who shoos everyone else out of the room. “Y’all just take your time,” he says, when he’s the last one in the doorway. “When you’re ready to be around the rest of us, you come on down and we’ll make you feel better too. But it’s probably best to have some private time, first.” Because Mitch knows all these bodies in the room can be overwhelming, and there’s only so much of Joe to go around, and… and Mitch knows that the rest of them should probably have their _own_ conference downstairs, to debrief from what just happened and make sure that everyone feels okay about it.

Thank God for all of them, really. The way they all just accept what Joe gives them, and they don’t push for more. They take what Joe gives them and they _pick up the slack,_ so that Nate and Joe can have moments like this. The guys – they don’t get anything out of this moment, this chunk of time for Joe to cry and cry… they don’t get anything out of it, but they all work together to _allow_ for it. There’s no question that they’d do _anything_ for Joe, anything at all.

 

Joe doesn’t cry often.

There are some pitchers who cry in the locker room after a tough game, but not Joe. Joe had a whole midseason slump, and it only made him _angry,_ not sad.

He might shed a few tears when he’s deepthroating someone, but that’s more of a gag reflex thing than an emotional upheaval. Even after a rough session with Nate, Joe doesn’t usually cry. If he does cry a little bit, it’s from the pain, and his tears dry up quickly. He might cry behind closed doors with Sandy, but Nate doesn’t know.

If Joe were crying like _this,_ behind closed doors with Sandy, Nate’s pretty sure he would have found out by now. The sound of him is _wretched,_ like the kind of crying that only makes it to the silver screen in an artsy film where they want to traumatize the audience.

He’s incoherent. He’s vacillating between quiet weeping, and the sort of loud, anguished wails that usually only accompany grief.

It’s not like he’s hysterical, though. It’s not his fault. Nate took Psych 101 in high school; he understands how Joe’s head right now is like a super-concentrated cocktail of hormones that his brain doesn’t know how to process. The crying, it just… it happens, and it’s… absolutely heart-wrenching to listen to.

Benny leans his head forward to catch Nate’s gaze – _Remember to breathe,_ he mouths to Nate, and Nate does as he’s told. He takes a deep breath – feels it expand his ribcage, pop some vertebrae in his spine. He lets it out slowly, and even more of the tension melts away. Benny has more experience with this. Thank God for Benny.

“I love you,” Nate whispers aloud, to neither Benny nor Joe in particular, but to both. To everyone, in the most inclusive sense. “So much.”

Joe makes a whining sound, with his face pressed against Nate’s chest, and Nate can feel the trembling in Joe’s shoulders. There’s wetness sinking into Nate’s shirt, but he ignores it – of all the bodily fluids they’ve been dealing with this afternoon, tears and snot aren’t so bad.

“He’s still shaking,” Benny says. “Is he cold?”

Nate shrugs, helplessly. Benny nods, and he shifts away, rolling off the bed. Joe makes a noise when he feels Benny leave, and he turns over his shoulder to frantically look for the kid, but Benny just smiles at him, promises, “I’ll be right back, I’m just getting a blanket.”

For the first time in ten minutes, Joe seems to comprehend what’s being said to him, and he gives a shaky nod, before turning back to Nate and pushing closer against the warmth of Nate’s body.

“Oh, Joey…” Nate says, pulling him closer.

Benny fetches the ugly duvet from the corner where Sandy had left it. When he gets back on the bed and pulls the comforter across their bodies, Joe grunts a sound of pain. The fabric is probably scratchy enough to irritate his especially sensitive, bare ass. “You’re alright,” Benny tells him, with faint amusement.

 

Joe starts trying to control his crying. Reedy, even breathing syncopated with hiccups – his eyes are shut tight, and he’s concentrating so hard on getting control over himself.

Nate takes some tissues from nightstand. After a brief hesitation, he presses the tissues into Joe’s hand. For a fraction of a second Nate had considered scrubbing Joe’s face clean himself but, considering how fragile Joe’s feeling right now… better to give control over this. So Joe cleans himself up a bit. The sniffling is worse, now, but at least he’s no longer sobbing.

When Joe finds his voice, the first thing he says is, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Nate replies, simply.

“This is what we expected,” Benny adds. “That’s why we talked about it first. Why don’t you drink something?”

They try to help him into a sitting position, but Joe gasps and goes tense with pain – it hurts too much to sit up. So Nate sits up and pulls Joe’s legs across his lap, so he’s supported under his thighs and under his arms but his ass isn’t pressed against anything. Benny unscrews the cap off of a Gatorade, and he presses it into Joe’s grasp, not letting go of the bottle until he’s sure Joe’s got it.

Joe looks at it, wearily, and then he tips his head back and chugs half the bottle. Then he passes it back to Benny, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

Benny takes the used tissues from him as well, and he puts them and the bottle on the bedside table. Joe leans against Nate’s chest some more – Nate can feel the uneven vibrations of Joe’s voice, when he asks, “Where’s everyone else?”

“They went downstairs, to give you some space,” Benny answers. “But we can go down and join them when you’re ready. I’m sure they all want to see you, make sure you’re alright.”

“ _Are_ you alright?” Nate asks the man in his arms.

Joe nods, and sniffles. His eyes are glazed over with exhaustion, lazily trained on Nate’s shoulder. “Sorry about the crying,” he says, “must have freaked them out.”

Benny shakes his head. “It’s alright. Sandy’s with them.” He runs a hand up and down Joe’s back.

Joe manages to take a deep, slow breath, uninterrupted by hiccups. It’s a good sign, makes some of the tension unspool in Nate’s heart. “Want me to carry you downstairs?” Nate offers, because he doesn’t… he doesn’t think he’s ready to let go of Joe, just yet.

After a moment, Joe nods, and says, “Okay.”

 

When Joe tapped out, it was like getting that last out in the bottom of the ninth of a one-run game. Everyone still felt tense, like they couldn’t believe they’d done it. There was so much relief and disbelief that it didn’t feel like a win, yet.

Now it feels like a win.

When Nate rounds the corner into the living room, carrying a blanket-wrapped Joe across the threshold with his head tucked under Nate’s chin, the rest of the guys _applaud._ They laugh and cheer, and pat Nate and Benny on the back, as if they’re returning to the dugout, and not just to the living room sofa.

All the chili dishes and empty beer bottles are gone, and Nate wants to cry from relief, the way it makes him feel that they cleaned the space. He collapses in the middle of the sofa with Joe sat across his lap again. The guys are careful not to swarm, but one by one they each find a place to sit around the room, on the floor or the couches, satisfied to just be in the same space for awhile. Joe refuses the hot tea Jackie offers (because he’s too tired to drink it, or at least that’s what Nate suspects,) but he lets Brock read him the notifications from what he missed on his phone, nodding vaguely to the things Brock says.

Joe’s asleep within minutes, soft slow breaths against Nate’s shirt, the heavy weight of him a warm comfort. The rest of them put on a movie, find some blankets and some ice cream, turn off the lights.

Sandy comes to sit next to Nate for awhile, smiling with the same sense of satisfaction and relief that Nate feels. “My strong man,” Sandy murmurs, as his thumb caresses Joe’s cheek. The touch isn’t enough to wake Joe, and that’s alright. Instead, Sandy pats Nate’s shoulder. “You did a good job,” he says. “You did a good job listening, and trying to do the right thing for him. You should be proud.”

Nate thanks Sandy, and then he thanks him again, because it doesn’t seem like enough. But Sandy ignores that, and he just tells Nate to close his eyes, relax and enjoy the quiet. Sandy’s right to point it out.

It’s a rare thing, to spend so much time as a group like this, in the immediate afterglow of a win. Sometimes that afterglow looks like champagne bottles and goggles and tarped clubhouses, but this softness… this is a very special sort of moment. The sort of moment you need to soak in, for as long as it lasts.

“Don’t leave,” Joe mumbles. Nate startles – he’d been certain Joe was asleep, and Joe… still looks pretty out of it, but he’s looking up at Nate blearily now. And Nate’s not sure if he means _don’t leave the couch,_ or if he means that other thing that they aren’t talking about. He wonders if whether… whatever it is that just happened between them, tonight, made a difference… made Joe resigned enough to beg.

Nate doesn’t have a good answer for him. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say to this.

He presses a kiss to Joey’s lips – softly, gently enough that Joey shuts his eyes and sighs.

**Author's Note:**

> please comment if u liked it! thanks so much for reading!


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